Tough, resilient, hangs in there, doesn’t give up. Could I be describing Andy Murray? For once (these days), yes. His match against Florian Mayer today in the Rome quarterfinals was a confident, cool display of fortitude. Murray needed to call on all his skills, mental and physical, to prevail against the shockingly powerful German, 1-6, 6-1, 6-1. But call on them he did, with a minimum of angry ranting and furious glances to his box. Murray seemed determined to take care of business and not let anything—head games, hurt pride, or streaky opponent—get in his way.
As the score suggests, it was a steeply seesawing match. Mayer dominated the first set, clobbering his shots to the back corners with fast, powerful groundstrokes that had Murray scrambling. Mayer’s first serve was also effective. He broke Murray in the first game, then went on to break him twice more for the set.
This dismal start didn’t seem to demoralize Murray as deeply as it might many other players. And that fact alone made the contest absorbing—you watched Murray figure Mayer out, match his speed, slowly find weaknesses and soon thread his groundstrokes to pass the German by inches. It was literally like someone threading a needle—that’s how fast and accurate Mayer was.
The third game of the second set was where the momentum really shifted. Though he’d just broken Mayer, Murray flubbed two returns on top of missing both first serves. He looked miserable and his camp looked stricken. Concentrating intently, Murray then cracked a good first serve that Mayer netted, and after a brief dalliance at deuce, managed to draw an error and go up 3-1. From then on, the set was his, though Mayer didn’t wilt entirely. Murray’s level just increased incrementally while Mayer’s dropped the same amount.
The third set saw Murray confidently working Mayer from side to side, letting his opponent trip himself up. Murray showed the gumption he’s known for, running down Mayer’s lobs and scrambling to reach his dropshots. It was on one of these dropshot returns, in the second game, that Murray seemed to send a message—Mayer got the return back but Murray passed him for a winner. It was decisive, clever, confident. On the next point, Murray broke after Mayer hit a ball into the net.
“This just shows how tough he is mentally,” a commentator said of Murray, with no allusion to how much that toughness has been MIA for most of this season. Murray regained some credibility in this match, one senses in his own eyes as well, which should be critical for him. Today made it abundantly clear why he is always included in the discussion of top men’s players.
—Kristy Eldredge
