ANDY Murray fought to preserve his French Open hopes with a five-set victory over Radek Stepanek and then denied that his split with former coach Amelie Mauresmo had anything to do with his on-court behaviour.

In an interview in l’Equipe at the weekend, Mauresmo had indicated the Scot’s difficulties in controlling his emotions on court had left her feeling she could not achieve what she wanted from the partnership.

L’Equipe then published an interview with Murray in which he talked about the issue, although he insisted he was not responding to Mauresmo’s comments.

The 29-year-old said: “Me and Amelie have a very good relationship, and I don’t think it’s fair to try to say otherwise.

“I did an interview before the tournament, before anything that Amelie had said had come out.

“And the last two days was supposedly that I was hitting back at Amelie’s comments and disagreeing with everything that she said and that we had a really tough break-up.

“That simply is not true. When we sat down in Madrid (earlier this month where they decided to part ways) – anyone who said it’s heated is lying and was not there. It was far from heated.

“We spoke very calmly the whole time. And to say that the reason that we stopped working together is because of my behaviour on the court, that is not true. In Madrid when we spoke, we didn’t discuss that one time.

“For sure, when we were working together, we discussed many things on the court, and there were times when, like with all of my coaches, they said, ‘You need to concentrate more on the match. Stop directing your frustration at the box and being distracted from what’s going on on the court’.

“But to say that that’s why we stopped working together is untrue. Obviously what’s happened the last few days has been difficult, because I didn’t have a chance to talk about it or respond or anything.”

Murray said he had not talked to Mauresmo, although his agent had, but the Frenchwoman did send him a message. I’m sure we’ll see each other here at some stage,” he added.

Murray went through his whole range of emotions during a two-day battle with 37-year-old qualifier Stepanek before coming through 3-6 3-6 6-0 6-3 7-5.

Murray, whose last first-round exit at a grand slam was more than eight years ago, lost the first two sets when the match began on Monday but had turned things around and led 4-2 in the fourth when darkness ended play early.

He had no trouble polishing off that set on the resumption but the fifth was hugely tense and at one stage Stepanek was two points away from victory.

But Murray held firm and then took advantage of the first drop in his opponent’s level to clinch victory after three hours and 41 minutes. He now plays Frenchman Mathias Bourgue.

Murray paid tribute to Stepanek, saying: “It’s unbelievable what he’s doing.

“He had an extremely bad injury last year and still at 37 coming out and fighting like that. I don’t expect to be doing that myself at that age.”

It was the eighth time in his grand slam career and ninth time overall that Murray has recovered from two sets down to win a match.