By Chris Oddo | Tuesday February 28, 2017
Defending champion Stan Wawrinka was knocked out of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Tuesday, falling to Bosnia’s Damir Dzumhur, 7-6(4), 6-3.
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“Not good enough," said Wawrinka, according to ATPWorldTour.com. "I think I started well, but it was a tough match, missing a little bit something to push a little bit more to be a little bit more active.”
Wawrinka let leads of 3-0 and 4-1 slip in the first set. The Swiss had been out of action since the Australian Open, and had spent much of the last month rehabbing a knee injury that was plaguing him in January.
Dzumhur’s second ace of the match gave him two set points in the first set tiebreaker, and he finished the stanza off with a backhand down-the-line winner on the next point.
Dzumhur’s victory was his second consecutive triumph against the Top 5—he defeated Rafael Nadal last year in Miami when the Spaniard was forced to retire down 3-0 in the final set.
“I started to fight, to grind, and I found some way to play, to stay in the game,” Dzumhur said. “Playing longer points was giving me more chances."
Andy Murray started slowly but found his form and strolled to a 6-4, 6-1 win over Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri in his first match since falling to Mischa Zverev at this year’s Australian Open.
The top seed made just 40 percent of his first serves but broke four times on eight opportunities to claim victory in 79 minutes.
Murray will face Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in the second round. Dzumhur will face Marcel Granollers.