Still, Murray does not see himself as being in a crisis. And nor should he. And, even though the matches will not offer the same intensity as playing in a tournament, he will at least have further semi-serious grasscourt practice when he appears at next week's Boodles Challenge, an exhibition event at Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire. Murray will want to replicate what he did on his first appearance at Wimbledon last year when he made the third round, which remains his best result at the slams.

To the names of Stanislas Wawrinka, Jean-René Lisnard and Filippo Volandri we can add that of Janko Tipsarevic. The 21-year-old Serb, ranked No 114 in the world, yesterday became the latest unheralded player to beat Andy Murray when he completed a 7-6, 3-6, 6-2 victory here in the first round of the Stella Artois Championships.

Tipsarevic is a thoughtful individual - he has a quotation by Dostoevsky ("Beauty will save the world") tattooed on an arm in Japanese ("I was going to have it done in Russian but it didn't look good," he explained) - but did not exactly have to test his brain powers to win.