Andy Murray crashed out of the Monte Carlo Masters with a straight-sets defeat to Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka which saw him win only three games.
The US Open champion and world number two started his clay court season against Eduoard Roger-Vasselin on Wednesday, securing a two-set second-round win.
But he had no answer to the power of Wawrinka in a 6-1 6-2 defeat which lasted less than an hour on Monte Carlo’s Court Central.
Murray admitted a poor start to the match had allowed Wawrinka to take charge.
“When I started making a lot of errors he was able to dictate all of the points from there,” Murray said in the post-match press conference.
“If you take your foot off the gas you don’t give any power in your shots to dictate the points to your opponent.”
Murray conceded he normally needed time to settle into the clay court season and today’s performance reflected that.
“I’ve played some good tournaments here but it does take me time to feel comfortable on the surface. I need matches against top players to see what’s going wrong and going right and the things I need to work on to get better.”
Murray admitted the manner of his defeat had left him disappointed but he will aim to use it as a spur to improve for his next outing in Madrid in two weeks, indicating that he would miss the next tournament in Barcelona.
“It’s disappointing, no one wants to lose matches like that. Hopefully I can use it as motivation to improve because I really need to do a lot of work.
“I need to work really hard over the next two weeks to get ready for Madrid.”