Defending champion Andy Murray faced a test of endurance when he came up against 28th seed Fabio Fogini in a heated contest on Center Court under the hot Friday sun.

Murray pulled through by winning five games on the trot to win 6-2 4-6 6-1 7-5 and secure his spot in the next round.

Speaking of the heroic flurry of winners, the Brit confessed he felt that he “did not move particularly well” during the match, drawing attention again to an ongoing hip problem.

Conversely, Murray also pointed out that he didn’t know whether the cause of his struggle was the hip or not in a match that did not flow as well as his previous rounds against Alexander Bublik and Dustin Brown.

"There were a lot more rallies from the back of the court from Fabio. It's partly down to the way he plays as well. I felt a little bit off balance but I didn't feel like I moved particularly well tonight," said the top seed.

"I don't know if that was anything to do with my hip or not. But that's something I hopefully will do a bit better in the next match.

"It was also getting dark towards the end. We would probably had to have come off and closed the roof had I lost that fourth set so you're thinking a little bit about that as well, a change of conditions and a 20-minute break to think about things before playing a fifth set. So obviously pleased to get off in four."

Murray on his next opponent

En route the quarter-finals, Murray will now come up against unseeded Frenchman Benoit Paire on Monday and reserved some praise for his upcoming opponent, adding: "He has very good hands, moves well, takes a lot of chances, goes for his shots. Again, he can be quite up and down. But he seems to have played pretty well so far at this event.

"I expect that to be tricky. I think until this year he hasn't played so well on the grass, but, again, I see no reason why he can't play good grass-court tennis."

Murray has faced Paire once before in a duel that he won without too much difficulty, coming back from a set down and break down during the decider on his way to victory in Monte Carlo last year.

Murray’s 2017 Wimbledon campaign kicked off without any surprises as he eased passed 20-year old Russian-born Kazakh, Bublik, summoning all his experience to overwhelm his rival to win 6-1 6-4 6-2 before accomplishing a similar feat against the showy German-Jamaican, Brown, whom he bested 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.

Can Murray overcome his problems to make it another successful Wimbledon campaign? Have your say in the comments section below.