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Murray carries on the good work with routine victory

Chris Lehourites
Thursday 11 October 2007 00:00 BST
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Andy Murray continued his recent revival with a routine 6-2, 6-4, first-round victory over Korolev Evgueni at the Kremlin Cup in Moscow yesterday.

The 70 places separating the world No 18 Murray and his Russian opponent were immediately apparent as the Scot gained an early break to steal the initiative.

Evgueni, 19, was rarely in the contest in the first set despite the backing of home support and was broken for a second time as Murray took just 33 minutes to take a one-set lead.

The British No 1, a finalist in Metz last week, improved his first serve vastly in the second set but Evgueni improved too and proved a far sterner test as the game progressed.

The third seed forced just two break points on the Russian's serve and managed to convert one, giving him the break required to seal the match. Waiting for him in the next round is Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic, whom Murray defeated in France last week.

Meanwhile, representatives from the sport's leading professional associations will meet in London tomorrow to discuss the formation of an "integrity unit" designed to keep the sport free of match-fixing.

The meeting, which will include the Association of Tennis Professionals, the International Tennis Federation and the Women's Tennis Association, comes three days after Murray became the latest player to speak out about corruption in the sport.

"It will be to discuss the next steps needed in order to ensure that a tennis-wide integrity unit is created as quickly as possible," a spokesperson from the ATP said. Murray said it was difficult to prove if someone was throwing a match, but added "everyone knows it goes on" . That prompted the ATP to ask for an immediate meeting.

"We have asked, via his agent, to meet with him at the earliest possible moment, which most probably will be early next week at the Madrid Masters," the spokesperson said.

On court, Jelena Jankovic retired from the Bangkok Open with heat exhaustion in her first-round match against Zi Yan. She let slip a one-set lead to the Chinese and called it a day following a medical time-out after losing the second set. Rain halted the match between Venus Williams and the Dane Caroline Wozniacki with Williams leading 6-2, 4-1.

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