by Pete Bodo
It's as powerful and predictable a natural event as the great caribou migration in Alaska, the flight of Monarch butterflies to Mexico, or the hazardous journey freshwater eels undertake in order to reach the Sargasso sea. As soon as the last ball at the French Open is struck, and in many cases even before, tennis fans and the media in the United Kingdom begin to focus on the hopes of British players at Wimbledon with the intensity of Atlantic salmon swimming against powerful currents.
It doesn't matter if your best player is an international star—a Roger Taylor, Mark Cox, or Tim Henman—or a journeyman (say, a Jeremy Bates) hoping to give a decent accounting of himself in the main draw. Or even someone in between, like John Lloyd. Whoever the best British player is as Wimbledon approaches becomes the subject of intense scrutiny, wild speculation and is justified as an irrational hope. He's led to those wrought-iron gates of Wimbledon by a virtual mob, gun to his head. Run into a Brit between now and Wimbledon, mention tennis, and the next question out of his or her mouth is almost guaranteed to be, So what do you make of Murray's chances?
It can't be easy on these guys, and in all honesty their hero-in-waiting status also confers on them extraordinary opportunity and sometimes extraordinary privilege. That helps explain why a strapping Canadian lad like Greg Rusedski happily moved to his mother's native England, tied on a Union Jack headband and began to refer to gas as "petrol" and his TV set as his "telly." Tennis stardom in the UK is low-hanging fruit for any British player who can punch two consecutive forehands across the net (something Rusedski sometimes was hard pressed to do).
I've always admired how well most British players handle this situation; it would be awful easy to gag or freeze up the minute you step out onto one of those immaculate grass courts at Wimbledon. Take Henman. He was in the semifinals of Wimbledon four times, and in the quarters that many times again. He went out before either of those rounds just six times. When you factor in the early-round losses players suffer early and late in their careers, that's an excellent record for a guy who was ranked in the Top 10 (career-high of No. 4) at the end of any given year just five times in 16 years.
Rusedski, by contrast, struggled with the pressure at Wimbledon, punching through to only one quarterfinal in 14 attempts. He petered out in the fourth round (four times) or earlier the rest of the time. And now we have Murray, who's still a youngster at 24. He's the best British player spawned in the Open era, and thus far he's borne the pressure that entails at Wimbledon extremely well. He's never lost at Wimbledon before the third round (that was in his debut, when he was barely 18, and he lost to a former finalist, David Nalbandian). These past two years, he made the semis, losing to two of the best grass-courters of our era, Andy Roddick (2009) and Rafael Nadal (2010).
So let the world laugh when the BBC or the Times of London or The Sun or Daily Mail tees up another Here Comes Andy! story, or when those pleas, mournful as the cry of seagulls, ring out throughout Centre Court, Come on, Andy! Those romantics have every right to hope and cheer. There's a reason that every time Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic beats Murray on a big occasion, one of them can be counted on to tell the world: Andy is a great player. He's going to win a major one day soon. He's too good a player not to. . .
When I heard Rafa say that after he subdued a sprightly and elusive Murray in the Roland Garros semis a week ago, I wondered if Murray still feels flattered by that kind of endorsement, or if asks himself, What is this, an Andy Murray pity party? *
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I certainly hope Andy gets that major soon, although my rooting interest is always mild at best (sorry, it's professional reflex). That's less because I'd like to see a male British player win Wimbledon in the Open era (which I do) than because I find Murray to have what might be the rarest and best quality of all. He's. . . interesting. Simple as that. More interesting, to me, than his ATP betters. His game is interesting. His person is interesting. He may drive his fans mad, but they can't take their eyes off him and have no idea what he's likely to do next (in that sense, his fans aren't that different from we professionals).
Murray is rolling along nicely at Queen's Club, even if, in his case, "rolling along" usually means only that he's. . . alive. He's surviving gut-wrenching three setters, constantly tip-toeing to the brink of disaster and peeking over the edge, and finding ways to turn hopeless situations into triumphs and enormous advantages into liabilities. This guy never met a serve he can't break or a lead he can't lose, which adds up to combustible tennis. Just review his statistics at the French Open (particularly break points for and against) and you'll see what I mean.
Yet despite his travails, Murray really did give Nadal all that the eventual champ could handle, and offered this realistic (and to me, accurate) appraisal of what happened:
"It was a close match. It was a long match, a lot of long games, a lot of deuce games. Yeah, a lot of service games were really, really tight. Yeah, I thought I did well. Everyone seems to think it's easy against Rafa to just come into the net or come in or go for big shots, but you do have to be very patient. Sometimes I didn't quite get the ball I was looking for, and sometimes when I did I made a few mistakes. But I think it was a close match."
Murray didn't win a set, the way Federer would in the final, in that semi. He didn't hit a few hot streaks the way the beaten finalist eventually would—splurges that undoubtedly made Nadal uncomfortable. But Murray seemed to pose a more consistent, realistic threat. Murray can look like he's in with a chance even when he's playing ragged, frayed tennis. Federer, by contrast, has to be at his absolute peak and putting on a clinic to look like he even has chance against Rafa. It's strange, but so be it.
Murray's French Open was a real adventure this year, but remember, he rolled his ankle in one of his early matches and he was under the influence of painkillers and anti-inflammatories for the rest of the tournament. That explains why, at times, I wondered if Murray could possibly be hallucinating. He certainly played poorly against players who ought not to have troubled him (who wouldn't want to play Juan Ignacio Chela in the quarterfinals at Roland Garros?). But he got through it (perhaps that sentence ought to make it onto his headstone 75 years from now).
Murray has never really liked clay-courts, and he embarked on the grueling death march to Roland Garros while in the throes of a horrible slump. By the time the red dust settled, he had come closer than anyone (until Federer) to snapping Djokovic's winning streak, and he made the semis at the main event for the first time in his career. "It's been my best French Open, so I've improved on this surface," Murray said after the Nadal match. Right now I'm disappointed, but this is the surface I've struggled on the most in the past."
Even at the height of the French Open, Murray's domestic press is always working one or another Wimbledon angle—the home tournament, the Championships, is always the lodestar. So how would Murray's performance in Paris affect his chances at Wimbledon?
"I'm going on to a surface (grass) that I've played well on, a surface I enjoy," he said. "Also, even though everyone about goes into the grass-court period a little bit tired after the clay, it's like it's a totally fresh, completely different way of playing, and it's exciting. So I look forward to that."
It's pretty hard to predict anything Murray. But while his run at the French can hardly be called pretty, it was a run. And a guy who goes on a run is always a little more dangerous. Given how well Murray answers the call at Wimbledon, it would be insulting—and inaccurate—to question the faith of the British fans. They aren't hoping for a miracle, as they've sometimes been forced to do in the past. They're just hoping for what, if you listened to those Grand Slam victory speeches made by his conquerors, might be called justice.