Stat of the Day: Andy Murray records 700th win of career

He seemed to be down and out several times in the match—he lost the first set, 6-1, and was down 3-1 in the third—but like he’s done so many times in his career, Andy Murray battled back, and at the end of the day he made it through his opening match at Indian Wells against Taro Daniel, 1-6, 6-2, 6-4.

And this win was a significant one: it was the 700th tour-level win of Murray’s career, making him just the fourth active male player—and 18th man in the entire Open Era—to reach that extraordinary milestone.

“It’s a target I set myself from the end of last year, and obviously I’m happy to achieve it,” Murray said of the milestone. “It’s not too many guys who’ve managed to do that, and with everything that’s gone on the last few years, I could’ve been way past 700. But I kept fighting and got there, and now I’ll look on to try and reach another target, another milestone.

“But this is a good one.”

MOST CAREER WINS FOR A MAN IN THE OPEN ERA (tour-level)
1,274: Jimmy Connors
1,251: Roger Federer
1,068: Ivan Lendl
1,043: Rafael Nadal (going into Indian Wells)
991: Novak Djokovic
951: Guillermo Vilas
908: Ilie Nastase
883: John McEnroe
870: Andre Agassi
801: Stefan Edberg
793: Arthur Ashe
779: Stan Smith
762: Pete Sampras
734: David Ferrer
722: Manuel Orantes
713: Boris Becker
702: Brian Gottfried
700: Andy Murray (including 1st Rd win at Indian Wells)

Awaiting Murray in the second round will be No. 31 seed Alexander Bublik—Murray leads their head-to-head, 2-0, beating the Kazakh in the first round of Wimbledon in 2017 and in the first round of Rotterdam a few weeks ago.