Andy Murray already has his next coach picked out, but he's still conducting a pretty good audition.
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Murray, the No. 7 seed, fought his way through a two-day, five set marathon and reached the fourth round of the French Open with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 12-10 victory over Philipp Kohlschreiber on Sunday.
Murray was making an assault on the No. 1 ranking last summer when he became the first Brit to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. But then a shoulder injury sidelined him for most of the rest of 2013, and he has been slow to return to form in 2014.
Compounding Murray's on-court struggles was the resignation of coach Ivan Lendl - the man that helped Murray win the 2012 U.S. Open as well as Wimbledon last year during their two-year-plus partnership.
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Murray has been deliberate in his search for a successor to Lendl, which has led to his 21-9 record heading into Roland Garros.
Murray needed four hours and seven minutes to get past Kohlschreiber and sounded disappointed that he didn't put away the 28th-seeded German earlier.
"I was up in every set, and to not finish at the end of the fourth set when I was up 4‑2 serving 30‑Love was obviously tough," Murray said, according to tennis.si.com. "Physically in the fifth set I was struggling. You know, I was cramping. So I was disappointed obviously that I wasn't able to finish in four sets."
Murray admitted catching a break when the match was halted Saturday night with the score 7-7 in the fifth set to give him a night's rest to come back and finish the job.
"Stopping the match probably helped me a little bit, because if I had played seven or eight more games, probably wouldn't have been great," Murray said. "But today was a pretty high standard, I thought, for probably the best standard of the match I think from both of us. You know, he came up with some great shots when he was behind in games today. I thought both of us served a little bit better. It was a good finish to the match."
Murray now faces No. 24 Fernando Verdasco in the fourth round with hopes of reaching the quarterfinals, where he finished at the Australian Open earlier in the year.
And hopes that his next coach has a lot to work with to get him back to competing for the No. 1 ranking.
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