Murray close to Aussie success

28th Jan 2010

As I’m sure you’re aware, Andy Mur­ray, Britain’s only chance of a bit of ten­nis glory has recently brushed aside the per­ma­nently crocked Spaniard, num­ber two ranked Rafael Nadal, book­ing him­self a spot in the semi finals and sub­se­quently the final itself of the Aus­tralian Open, much to the sur­prise, it seems, of the British media.

How­ever, I’d argue that this suc­cess has long been on the cards for Mur­ray. It was, and still is, not a mat­ter of if, but a mat­ter of when he wins his first Grand Slam title. As the only mem­ber of the top five ATP ranked play­ers yet to win a major, the pres­sure to do so is obvi­ously great, how­ever, the British media’s reluc­tance to cover any ten­nis event in depth, other than the glo­ri­ous two weeks of ten­nis hys­te­ria at SW19, means that oppor­tu­ni­ties to per­form away from the spot­light of the British media, such as at the Aus­tralian or US Open offer Mur­ray a much more real­is­tic chance of Grand Slam suc­cess.  The hype and sub­se­quent pres­sure of media scrutiny dur­ing Wim­ble­don ren­ders Murray’s chances of suc­cess infi­nitely more unlikely. In con­trast to team sports where home field advan­tage can often pro­vide the extra moti­va­tion for vic­tory within an envi­ron­ment in which play­ers can pro­vide sup­port towards one another and a sense of shared respon­si­bil­ity, in the soli­tary envi­ron­ment of ten­nis, plac­ing the hopes of a nation on a sin­gle per­former can only affect their per­for­mance negatively.

Con­se­quently, the recent per­for­mances of Andy Mur­ray at the Aus­tralian Open should not have come as a sur­prise to many ten­nis watch­ers. The 22-year-old Scot, attempt­ing to become Britain’s first men’s Grand Slam win­ner since Fred Perry in 1936, had under­taken a pun­ish­ing new fit­ness régime in the lead up to this year’s tour. In Decem­ber 2007 Mur­ray went through an Olympic-style train­ing camp in Miami, bring­ing in fit­ness experts which even­tu­ally yielded 5 sin­gles titles as well as vic­to­ries over Nadal, Fed­erer and a first Grand Slam final appear­ance at the US Open. Prior to this year’s Aus­tralian Open Mur­ray returned to South Florida, this time with only his coach Miles Macla­gan, fore­go­ing lucra­tive appear­ance money in the Mid­dle East to ensure he was in Aus­tralia for the New Year, pro­vid­ing plenty of time to accli­ma­tise to the fierce Aus­tralian heat.

Sim­i­larly, he com­peted in the Hop­man Cup with Laura Rob­son — you’ll remem­ber her from the ridicu­lous hype which sur­rounded the 16-year-old at last year’s Wim­ble­don — which acted as a gen­tle warm up for Mur­ray com­ing off such a gru­elling train­ing pro­gramme. As for the ben­e­fits of this famously inten­sive pro­gramme, the sta­tis­tics tell the story; in 2007 he reached in 3 out of 12 Grand Slam and Mas­ters Series events at least the quar­ter final stage, in 2008 6 from 12 and in 2009 8 from 12, dis­play­ing con­sis­tent improve­ment in his per­for­mance. Like­wise, of his 14 sin­gles titles, 12 have been achieved on hard courts, the same as found on the Aus­tralian Open courts. With Fed­erer show­ing some frail­ties in his defeat of Davy­denko and Mur­ray charg­ing into the final in impres­sive style, the scene looks set for another Federer-Murray final.

Murray’s per­for­mance against Nadal was con­ceiv­ably the best of his career, in which he exhib­ited not just his trade­mark counter attack­ing style but also a new­found con­fi­dence in aggres­sive play, win­ning the vast major­ity of net encoun­ters. Mur­ray him­self said; ‘I think def­i­nitely now I’m ready to win a Grand Slam, and hope­fully I can do it here…I feel fresh. I don’t know how he feels. From my side, I feel good phys­i­cally. That’s not going be an issue for me in the match.’

Ten­nis leg­end Pete Sam­pras agreed that it is only a mat­ter of time before Mur­ray tastes Grand Slam suc­cess, whilst Nadal him­self com­mented after the match; ‘He has a big chance to win this tour­na­ment. I played against one of the best play­ers in the world. He deserves to win — and he’s going to do it.’ Ricky Hat­ton, a curi­ous spec­ta­tor in the crowd and one of Murray’s sport­ing idols, hailed Murray’s ‘won­der­ful per­for­mance’; now all Hat­ton has to do is take a leaf out of Nadal’s book and know him­self when to call it quits.