Taking Centre Stage Again

“Make sure you move your feet when you’re nervous,” read one of the notes that Andy Murray wrote to himself before his 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) win over Milos Raonic in the Wimbledon final on Sunday. Whatever Ivan Lendl, his super-coach, told him in the 40 hours leading up to the match, it couldn’t have been more useful than that little piece of advice that Murray gave to himself.

Murray, as he admitted afterward, was very nervous. This was the first time in 11 major finals that he had faced an opponent not named Novak Djokovic or Roger Federer. That meant it was the first time he was the favorite.

“There's always a lot of pressure on me to play well here,” Murray said.

Now, though, he was actually expected to win.

But while Murray showed the tension on break points—he converted just one of seven—and while he never missed an opportunity to vent his anxiety in the direction of his player box, he also never stopped moving his feet.

Murray is well known for his court coverage, of course, but there’s something about the way he moves in Wimbledon finals. In his last one, against Djokovic in 2013, there was hardly a ball he couldn’t track down. Lifted, pushed and urged on by a Centre Court crowd that had never seen a British man win at the All England Club, he tore across the grass like a man possessed that afternoon. On Sunday, it didn’t take long to see that Murray was going to harness the home support in much the same way.

With Raonic serving at 3-3 in the first set, Murray sprinted from one side of the court to the other to get a seemingly ungettable volley, and then pulled it back crosscourt for a passing-shot winner. It was the first of many brilliant passes from Murray. With his bending crosscourt backhands, dipping crosscourt forehands that forced the 6’5” Raonic to bend, and one delicately bunted backhand pass that nestled just inside the sideline, Murray put on a clinic in how to handle a net-rushing opponent.

Three points after that winner at 3-3, Murray broke Raonic. He wouldn’t break him again, but he would never lose command of the match, either. Murray was the superior player in all departments. He defused Raonic’s bomb serve and sent his missiles straight back at him. After hitting 23 aces against Federer in the semis, Raonic was limited to eight in the final, and he won a higher percentage of points on his second serve (71 percent) than his first (67 percent). On his own serve, Murray faced just two break points, and he found a way to extract a miss from the Raonic return whenever he needed one. Murray and Raonic each hit 39 winners, but while Raonic also made 39 errors, Murray made just 12.

“I was still as nervous as I was before the other Grand Slam finals,” Murray said, “but I stuck to my game plan very well today. I played pretty well from the front the last three, four weeks, and that was true again today.”

The disparity between the two players, in their skills, their versatility and their experience, was most pronounced during the tiebreakers. In the first of them, Murray jumped out to a 6-1 lead; in the second, he went up 5-0. In both cases, Murray became sharper under sudden-death pressure, while Raonic grew tighter. According to Murray, during the tiebreakers he took confidence from the fact that Raonic had never been in those kinds of situations, in this kind of match.

“I was keeping up with him,” Raonic said, “but then when it counted, I was unable to get on top.”

That wasn’t a surprise. The Raonic “brand,” as one reporter put it today, is about methodical, step-by-step progress. Everything he does on a tennis court, with the possible exception of his serve, looks learned rather than natural. Over the years, he has had to learn to run faster, make more returns and close out points at the net. In his first Grand Slam semi, Raonic lost in straight sets; in his second, he lost in five sets; in his third, against Federer on Friday, he broke through. Now, when it comes to Slam finals, the process may have started all over again. But Raonic understands this, and he didn’t appear at all discouraged by Sunday's result.

“It was phenomenal,” Raonic said of his Wimbledon 2016 experience. “I stepped up in a semifinal ... I thought I showed guts, showed vigor.”

“There’s not one thing I’m not going to try to improve.”

Murray’s victory marks the end of a three-year road back up the tennis mountaintop. Soon after winning Wimbledon in 2013, he had back surgery, and a year after that he nearly dropped out of the Top 10. With Amelie Mauresmo as his coach, Murray began to climb again, and Lendl’s leadership, as Murray said on Sunday, helped put him over the top. Still, I'm guessing that Murray also could have handled the lineup of players he faced at Wimbledon with Mauresmo in his corner. Coming into this fortnight, he was 4-0 against his fourth-round opponent, Nick Kyrgios; he had won 11 of 12 against his quarterfinal opponent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga; he had won his last four against his semifinal opponent, Tomas Berdych; and his last five against Raonic.

Whoever was in his corner, though, this day belonged to Murray. He said that in 2013 he wanted to win Wimbledon for everyone in his champion-starved nation. This time, while that was still true, he felt like the victory was more personal, something for himself and the team that worked so hard to help him achieve it.

One of the downsides of this age of top-dog ATP dominance is that players not named Federer, Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal rarely have a chance to be seen as winners. In the past, there was room for men like Guillermo Vilas, Jim Courier, Gustavo Kuerten, Pat Rafter and Yevgeny Kafelnikov to hold multiple Grand Slam crowns, and to be thought of as legends in their own right, rather than second fiddles. Murray has been a winner, too, but in eight of his previous 10 major finals he has finished in second place. But despite the frustrations, he kept coming back, and kept going deep at Slams. This time, finally, Murray was rewarded for his consistency and his persistence.

“I’m proud,” Murray said, “that I managed to do it again after a lot of tough losses in the latter stages of the Slams.”

His good hands, his fast feet, his brilliant returns, his deft passing shots, his solid serve, his under-appreciated nerve under pressure: Murray’s game is too good to be remembered as anything less than a champion’s.