!Andy by Pete Bodo
It could not have been easy being Andy Murray on Monday morning, although anything written or said about the Australian Open final needs to be prefaced with this disclaimer: The way Novak Djokovic played over the two-week span of the year's first Grand Slam event, it's open to question whether he would have been beaten by anyone, including any of the iconic names in tennis history.
It's easy to forget this, just like it's been easy to write about the final, and even the rounds leading up to it, without saying very much about Djokovic. He personified the expression made famous by NFL impresario Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders: Just win, baby.
I've been doing this writing bit for a long time now, so trust me on this—sometimes the least compelling story is that of a guy who just keeps his head down and his mouth shut and does his job. Although we had a few patented Novak the Entertainer moments these past two weeks, the No. 3 seed and now two-time Australian Open champion made winners, not headlines. There's nothing like a great, quiet win—although the irony is that great, quiet wins are often greeted with a like silence.
Andy Murray, by contrast, was a guy who in the final also kept his head down, but not in a good way, and who even in good times has trouble keeping his mouth shut. He's now lost three Grand Slam finals running, without having won a set. Well, that's not such a big deal. Goran Ivanisevic and Andre Agassi lost three before punching through, and Ivan Lendl was frustrated four consecutive times before he won major No. 1. Murray probably wouldn't mind having a career comparable to theirs.
But it isn't going to be easy to be Andy Murray for a while, and not just because of the bridesmaid chronicles. His domestic press is apt to be a little harsh at the best of times. I cruised around a little, to see what some of the Brits were writing. It wasn't easy, because much of the British press is behind a pay wall now. Still, a few nuggets are available, like this one from Johanthan? Liew of The Telegraph:
?????". . . And yet life is full of these things that promise greatness and bring only disappointment. The British summer. Crab claws. Those stomach-crunching machines they advertise on ITV2 at four in the morning. Any new Woody Allen film. Sticky spare ribs that yield about half a teaspoon of meat but will happily ruin an entire outfit. But only with Andy Murray, to garble that old African proverb, is disappointment utterly guaranteed."
Or how about this, from Dan Jones of the London Evening Standard:
"Murray shed no tears after defeat to Djokovic. He wept last year and it was valiant. To weep this year would have been a disgrace. This was Murray's worst performance of his three Grand Slam finals. He didn't earn the sobbers' prerogative."
You'd think a fellow Scot might be more sympathetic, and that was the case for at least one scribe, Neil McLeman, of the Scottish Daily Record:
"It was, quite simply, a case of freezing on the big stage. It is clear he has areas to address—but it will be a pointless exercise unless he is receiving the best advice."
I suppose i could go on (a report at The Guardian on-line said Murray "moved like a sloth" while the notorious tabloid, The Sun, noted that instead of the anticipated "roller-coaster ride," the match was "the dampest of squibs for our boy and the millions watching back home. . ."
Whatever that means. . .
At any rate, Murray himself said, upon leaving Melbourne, that he's contemplating a nice long rest; reading between the lines you can deduce that he needs and wants to re-group. I think Murray's countryman McLeman gets it right a few paragraphs up: Murray has issues and he needs guidance. This thing with childhood pal Dani Vallverdu serving as "coach" while Alex Corretja, the closest thing he has to a real mentor, cooled his heels back home in Barcelona is not cutting it.
There were times during the final when I found myself wishing that Murray had someone other than his mother Judy, Dani, or his fitness trainers in the guest box. Someone who might have found a button to push or a nerve to touch in order to jump-start Murray's enthusiasm. Instead, we were treated to the bizarre sight of Murray scolding his box, warning them to cool it, to relax (I presume). It was like watching the captain of the Titanic rearranging the deck chairs.
From about the mid-point of the third set of the final, I began to have this eerie feeling that, having so thoroughly sucked the energy out of the match and occasion, Andy Murray was going to find some way to end up winning it after all—you know, a careless point by Djokovic here, a casual winner by Murray there, and before you know it the set is gone and maybe Murray suddenly pops to life, while Djokovic is so stunned by the sneaky reversal that he can't keep a ball in the court. Don't laugh. It's happened, and more than once.
In that regard, Mats Wilander made an interesting remark that I'll have to pass along, paraphrased: Andy's plays like his game is in a hole, Mats observed, and his aim is to bring the other player's game down to his level, into the hole, rather than elevate his game to challenge his opponent. He plays more not to lose than to win.
Well, I'm not sure Murray actually aims to bring the other player down, and "playing more not to lose than to win" seems like just another way to win (you can ask Caroline Wozniacki about that) so there can't be anything wrong with that, unless you've confused figure skating with tennis. Whatever the case, though, one of Djokovic's other, big accomplishments in the final was to steer clear of that black hole that is Murray's game, especially when he's in a negative, defensive frame of mind—as he was throughout the final.
This negativity in Murray is not entirely a strategic thing, and it certainly isn't scripted in his playbook. It's a natural trait, and like all original or unconventional problems, it can give an opponent fits. Murray has been compared to many players, including one of the first men to tout his talent, John McEnroe. But the big difference between those two is that McEnroe knew how to channel his anger and frustrated perfectionism in a positive way. Murray is a lot more like Ilie Nastase, a former No. 1 who won two Grand Slam titles in five final appearances and ought to have won eight or 10 if you were to predict based solely on his obvious degree of talent.
Like Murray, when Nastase became negative he could really stink out the joint. And like Murray, he had no trouble assigning the blame for a piss-poor performance on any handy ambient factor. As The Guardian put it the other day, describing Murray: "He railed at his mother, squawking seagulls, the occasional ball boy, the cool night air, innocent whitewash and, ultimately, whatever demon inside him that wrecked his equilibrium."
The funny thing is that we haven't had many players of this ilk lately, at least not at or near the top. But they've always existed the game, and often at a high level. It doesn't make much sense asking these guys to change, or expecting that some new coach is going to effect a personality or game makeover. From this point of view, Murray isn't doing anything wrong, per se. He's just being himself, in a what you see is what you get kind of way. This is a kid who needs to find his own way, odd as it may look to us, and he's certainly intelligent enough to do that. But it will take time.
Murray's most egregious offense in the Australian Open final was his apparent inability to compete, or at least struggle in a convincing way. He appeared drained, sluggish, and flat-footed. Wise observers understood that a lot of that had to do with nerves, a problem which we've seen very little of lately, what with Roger and Rafa calling the tune in most majors. The key to this match may have been the mundane fact that Djokovic was free of anxiety and stress, while Murray was crippled by it. Djokovic had a positive outlook, while Murray, a natural born pessimist, was negative. We're accustomed to Grand Slam finals that are more about ball striking than such murky psychological issues, but regression is not out of the question.
In the end, Murray will probably struggle with this negativity. Sometimes, it will help him (it can really mess with an opponent's head, which is the part Wilander left out of his analysis), but more often it will hurt him, although he's already shown the ability to navigate around that. You don't get to be No. 5 in the world by repeatedly shooting yourself in the foot. Nastase, as much as he drove his fans mad, also worked around his glaring shortcomings. Like Nasty had been, Murray is already established as a factor at any tournament he enters, and that includes majors. Barring unforeseen problems, he seems sure to win a few of those, but you never know.
Tennis in many ways has become what you might call "corporate" and Murray is here to remind us that there's room for the guy who's a little bit different. Who's a little bit unsanitized. A little bit contrarian. Sure, I want to watch great finals, but I also like to see distinct personalities, intriguing styles of play, and complex, dramatic story lines. Murray provides some of those things, he makes the game inherently more interesting, even if now and then the price sometimes seems a little high.