Normal service resumed

James Ward came close to landing the biggest scalp of his career while Andy Murray felled the giant Croatian to become the only Briton to reach round three of this year's Championships.

In some ways you could say that normal service has been resumed but everyone acknowledges that Ward's loss to Mardy Fish was a close run thing and Murray could well have had company at the weekend, something he is obviously not accustomed to.

The match was a five set thriller as the British number two, ranked 173 in world terms, kept the 10^th seeded American on court for four hours 13-minutes before capitulating 6-3 5-7 6-4 6/7(3) 6-3.

It is 10 years since two British men graced the third round of a grand slam and if the 25 year-old Ward can build on this performance which made light of the disparity in their rankings, then the Londoner should be supporting Murray into the latter stages of the majors.

Fish was forced to dig deep throughout the match and whatever problems he had recently overcome with his heart problems, this workout should have given him plenty of confidence!

Ward may have lost, but his persistence and efforts were greeted by the No1 crowd as if he had been on the other side of the result.

"That was unbelievable," said Ward. "At the end especially, a standing ovation. I've watched Wimbledon since I was a little kid and I don't think I've seen too many here, so it was special.

"It was nice of Mardy as well. He said the standing ovation was for me, so go out and enjoy it. It was special. A moment you remember for the rest of your life.

"I'll be thinking a bit later on tonight and over the weekend. But obviously I don't like losing and I am still a little bit disappointed with it."

Had Ward won he would have been the first British player other than Tim Henman, Andy Murray and Greg Rusedski to have reached the third round since Danny Sapsford in 1999.

While Ward was trying to land his catch, Murray tackled the powerful Ivo Karlovic and as expected, it became an attritional match, dominated by the Croats big serve which, when returned, usually led to a deft drop shot or floated cross court pass.

But Murray, who has never lost to Karlovic in three previous attempts, was not going to let this one be the first, despite losing his opening service game!

It was always going to be tough one but the world number four showed great patience and persistence to win through 7-5 6-7(5) 6-2 7-6(4) and despite dropping that set, made only eight unforced errors in the match.

One of Murray's previous coaches wrote a book called Winning Ugly and that was certainly the case on this occasion. It wasn't a pretty match but as the Scot pointed out: "Winning is all that's really important when you're playing a guy with his game. It's so challenging to get into a rhythm. I did well at the beginning of the third set to get the break.

"With someone like him it's a bit of a lottery but you hope he makes a mistake. He served a double fault in the tie-break and that was the difference. I felt I returned well today. I didn't get aced too many times."