Once in a while, tennis players get a break they were not expecting, there is time to draw breath and regroup and their weary limbs do not flag quite as much as they ought. Andy Murray was asked to play his first match on the opening Sunday — earlier than the practice at the other three grand-slam tournaments — and required only two sets yesterday to reach the last 16 in the French Open for the first time. New adventures are becoming commonplace.

In the first game of the second set on Court Suzanne Lenglen yesterday, Janko Tipsarevic, of Serbia, allowed what looked a fairly harmless ball from Murray to bounce, thinking it was floating long, but it struck the middle of the line. At that moment, the knock-kneed legs that usually move like pistons, rusted and rebelled. He required both to be massaged and, as he walked back to his mark, he thumped his thighs vigorously with his racket frame.

He knew the game was up then, but could not show it too much. He ran around a lot, made intrepid gestures and actually flummoxed Murray for a bit, but once the British No 1 settled down, began to pick his spots and moved rhythmically through the gears, Tipsarevic could not live with him. The towel was thrown in when he trailed 7-6, 6-3 because he could not last one further game, let alone three more sets. It would have been reckless to have carried on, with the grass-court season bearing down.

And so Murray could warm down with one of his occasionally intense keepy-uppy football games with his group on an outside court, as if he did not have a care in the world. Those resurface tomorrow when he faces Marin Cilic, a free-wheeling right-hander, the youngest player in the top 20, who has not dropped a set here and gave Radek Stepanek, the No 18 seed from the Czech Republic, a real going-over yesterday.

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As Murray said a couple of days ago, it is only when you reach the second week of a grand-slam event that you can really look the championship squarely in the eye. The first week is a matter of surviving, the second is when you want to spread your wings. If you had said to the Scot when he started his campaign here that the three players standing in his way of a semi-final were Cilic, 20, Fernando González and Victor Hanescu, of Romania, he would surely have bitten your hand off.

With each passing grand-slam tournament, he is tending to break new ground. A quarter-final at Wimbledon, the US Open final and now the fourth round at the French — these are significant steps, most of which have been taken with real aplomb. There were a few treacly moments yesterday: he was 5-2 adrift in the first set, as the harum-scarum of the Serb unsettled him, but his recovery of the first of those breaks was replete with superb shots, slices and drives and he saved two set points in the tenth game, defence to an admirable fore.

In tie-breaks, Murray is as good as they come. Two aces relaxed him, his backhand flowered and, before he knew it, having broken in the first game of the second set, his foe was mortally wounded. “I played eight hours for the first round here and also a lot of matches last week and the back muscle of the right leg started to fall apart,” Tipsarevic said. “I was feeling it at the start, but that was not the reason I lost today.

“Andy is a smart player and as soon as he saw he needed to move me more than one time left to right, the game was in his favour.”

Those who expected that Rafael Nadal might find Lleyton Hewitt a bit of a handful were rudely disabused. The Spaniard won his 31st consecutive match at Roland Garros for the loss of five games. “I improved a little bit every day,” he said. “I play better the second day than the first. Always a win against Lleyton is very good news.”

Tomorrow, Nadal meets Robin Söderling, of Sweden, whom he defeated 6-0, 6-1 in Rome earlier this month. He will have slept soundly last night.