Murray starts US Open defence with a win

Defending champion Andy Murray reached the second round of the US Open with less than an hour of the third day remaining as he beat France's Michael Llodra in Wednesday's night session.

The Briton, 26, completed a 6-2 6-4 6-3 victory at 11.33pm local time in New York (04:33 BST), and moves on to face Argentina's Leonardo Mayer on Friday.

The decision to schedule Murray among the late matches on day three had met with criticism, as it could leave him at a disadvantage compared to his leading rivals later in the tournament.

There’s no debate on this it’s not it could be a disadvantage, it is a disadvantage period.

I know the organisers of all the grand slams have their own way of doing things but the organisers of the US Open have got their scheduling very very wrong, Murray should have been playing his second round match last night not his first.

Now that means that if he gets to the final he’ll have to play seven matches in 12 days, as opposed to playing seven in 14 days.

The whole reason the schedule at the US Open is the way it is, is due to TV scheduling and what I don’t understand is why the organisers didn’t pencil in Murray’s match for Monday night, wouldn’t that have been the best time to have the defending champion play in the first match of the first night session.

Still even with the stupid scheduling you’d still expect any two from Murray, Nadal and Djokovic to be in the final, and then expect to be in for a long night if you choose to stay up and watch it.