NEW YORK—The pre-match, drive-by interview that players are subjected to on their way into Arthur Ashe Stadium almost never offers up any insights. But when Justin Gimelstob asked Andy Murray why he had a 5-0 head-to-head record against Feliciano Lopez, the Scot explained that he’s very comfortable playing lefties. That he grew up playing lefties. That his own brother happens to be a lefty.
Of course, if that’s all there were to it, Murray would have a winning record over one Rafael Nadal. But he did seem curiously at ease against Lopez tonight in a straightforward, 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 win that had the feel of a first-round encounter against an overmatched opponent—or a low-stakes hit with one’s sibling—rather than a third-round meeting of seeds No. 4 and No. 25.
There’s no reason to be polite about it: The Spaniard was positively butchered the first set, which Murray pocketed, 6-1, in 26 minutes. The stats were ugly: The normally big-serving Lopez, who has produced some of best stuff on the biggest stages (witness his beat-down of Andy Roddick at this year’s Wimbledon), hit exactly zero aces and three double faults in that set. Murray, meanwhile, won the first 14 points and all 16 of his own service points. Thankfully, the quality improved for a passage of play early in the second set, defined by a number of highly entertaining rallies. And when Lopez’s serve showed up, like a late-arriving guest, just in time to bail him out of yet another break scenario, it seemed that he might yet make a match of it. But at 4-all, he leaned on his signature weapon too hard: On break point, he followed up a 138 mph fault with a 123 mph miss, after which Murray held to cinch the second.
The match would never return to the promise of those first eight games of the second set as Murray broke to begin the final set, and then broke again to 5-2. By the time it was all over, Lopez had littered up the stat sheet with 44 unforced errors to just 17 winners, while Murray posted a ratio of 25 to 16.
Almost lost in all this was the fact that Murray played beautifully tonight—he didn’t serve a single double fault and kept Lopez to just five aces; he mixed up his ground strokes, slicing low and looping high; and he passed beautifully, though—as John McEnroe pointed out on the television coverage—Lopez might have tried his luck approaching to Murray’s weaker forehand more often than his money backhand.
Most impressive was Murray’s intensity: Even as Lopez disappeared into his rearview mirror, Murray continued to run down every drop shot, stretch for every would-be winner, hang in every rally, and celebrate each hard-won point—when he actually had to work hard to win them. The near-disaster of his second-round match against Robin Hasse already seems a distant memory and perhaps that’s no accident: Murray, who can frustrate even his most admiring fans with an attitude that sometimes toggles between causal and surly, showed tonight that he gets, at least for the moment, that there’s no room for any of that at the upper echelon of the game, even if that’s all you’re getting from the other side of the court.
—Andrew Friedman