Andy Murray could be forgiven for thinking that taking three hours to end Grigor Dimitrov's resistance at the Cincinnati Masters was bad news, but the new world No.2 saw the test as a further boost to his US Open preparations .
The Scot had to do it the hard way against Dimitrov, pulling himself back from the brink of defeat to reach the quarterfinals, where he will face Richard Gasquet.
Dimitrov served for the match in the second and third sets but Murray rescued what appeared to be a lost cause, saving one match point to win 4-6, 7-6(3), 7-5.
The Scot has already had several late-night finishes this summer and his third-round contest pushed him to the limit. The start of the final major of the year in New York is just 10 days away, but Murray was happy to have proved his resilience again.
"The matches in the majors are really the ones that count, but they count the most if you can get through them," he said. "At the US Open, I was down a set and 5-1 against [Marin] Cilic in the quarter-finals; I was down two sets to one against [Fernando] Verdasco in the quarters at Wimbledon; at the Olympics I was down a set and a break against [Marcos] Baghdatis.
"If you want to win the big competitions, you'll have to come through difficult situations. Last year, I didn't come through enough of them. I lost a lot of matches from winning positions, and this year I managed to turn that around, which was very positive."
Murray was even a set and two breaks down against Dimitrov, before forcing - and winning - a tiebreaker in the second set and taking the contest to a decider.
"Physically it helps because that was a three-hour match," he added. "There is obviously a chance that you play a four-hour match at the US Open. I think other players look at matches like that and they say, 'Wow, he came back from a couple of breaks down in the second and 5-2 in the third'.
"You want to build up that reputation: when you are behind, you're going to try to come back and you're going to fight all the way. If that's in the back of your opponent's mind going into a competition, it helps."
Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic survived a scare to beat David Goffin, coming back from 3-0 down in the final set to win 6-4, 2-6, 6-3, while Rafael Nadal crashed out to fellow Spaniard Feliciano Lopez 5-7, 6-4, 7-6(3).