If Murray had been paired with Richard Gasquet in the first round on the Wimbledon grass, or to open against the Frenchman on the hard courts of the Australian Open or US Open, there would not be such a debate about whether he will progress.
Even though Murray made the quarter-finals in Paris last season, he is still regarded as vulnerable on the terracotta courts. “Clay just isn’t his surface yet,” Boris Becker told Telegraph Sport.
It is Murray’s misfortune that he will run into Gasquet when the former world No 7 and Wimbledon semi-finalist is hitting the ball so sweetly again. Just a week after he won a second-tier Challenger title in Bordeaux, Gasquet on Saturday in Nice he won his first tour-level title for three years, when he took a third-set tiebreak against Spain’s Fernando Verdasco for a 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 victory.
Gasquet missed the 2008 French Open because of injury, and he was barred from playing last year after testing positive for cocaine at a tournament in Miami earlier in the season.
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An independent drugs tribunal and the Court of Arbitration for Sport have since accepted his story that the cocaine entered his system when he kissed a girl called 'Pamela’ at a club in south Florida. It will be Murray’s first match with Gasquet since the Scot came from two sets down to beat him in the fourth round at Wimbledon two years ago.
Green or blue courts are better for Murray than the orange-red ones of Paris. It is his Becker’s opinion that Murray, the world No 4, cannot yet be considered a contender for the Coupe des Mousquetaires.
