Andy Murray suffers last-16 defeat to Diego Schwartzman at the European Open

Andy Murray exited the European Open in a straight sets defeat to Diego Schwartzman in what was a first ever meeting between the pair.

The Argentine insisted it was ‘a pleasure’ to play against the former British No.1 after beating him in a game of fine margins, winning 6-4, 7-6 (8-6) to reach the quarter-finals.

‘It was a pleasure to play against Andy,’ Schwartzman said in his on-court interview. ‘We had not played before and he is coming back and every week he is playing better and moving better.

‘I have a lot of respect because when I grew up playing tennis, I was watching Roger [Federer], Rafa [Nadal], Andy and Novak [Djokovic] and right now playing against him, is a pleasure for me.’

Murray was the first to break his opponent in the opening set as he barely put a foot wrong, racing into a 4-1 lead.

But Schwartzman didn’t take long to find his feet and rattled off four straight games to serve for the set.

Murray pulled off some exquisite drop shots which most players would have struggled to reach, but the lightning quick Argentine, one of the fastest players on the tour, had no problems and went onto win the first set in 55 minutes.

Murray looked frustrated at the end of the first set having lost five games on the spin but composed himself as his service game remained strong at the start of the second set.

Despite rallying, it was Schwartzman who again broke first in the fifth game with some neat work from the base line.

Murray was building momentum though and after winning three games in a row, pressure was now on the second seed to hold serve for the set.

But the three-time Grand Slam champion had now been on court for nearly five hours at this point, having come through a three-set thriller against Frances Tiafoe in the previous round in…