Murray Brings New Spin to Tennis at BetLM

Murray Brings New Spin to Tennis

Updated Oct 9, 2011 9:52 PM ET

Andy Mur­ray has beaten Rafael Nadal before, but not like this.

The Scot’s 3–6, 6–2, 6–0 demo­li­tion of the world’s No. 2 on Sun­day in the final of the Japan Open in Tokyo has given the end of the 2011 men’s tour a com­pletely new complexion.

We have spo­ken before of the remark­able hold the top four have enjoyed on the game for the past few years, and some crit­ics ques­tion whether we should only talk about a top three. Mur­ray, the one with­out a Grand Slam title, is in the process of demon­strat­ing why it is impos­si­ble to keep him out of the equation.

Since win­ning the Mas­ters Series title in Cincin­nati in August, Mur­ray has lost just one match — to Nadal in the US Open semi­fi­nals — and has racked up two more ATP tour titles, includ­ing his vic­tory last week in Bangkok. That takes his tally of career ATP tour titles to 20.

Sud­denly, a year that was being dom­i­nated by one man has been hijacked by another. Novak Djokovic has a bad back, which is hardly sur­pris­ing after the amount of attri­tional ten­nis he has played dur­ing the course of his phe­nom­e­nal year, and Roger Fed­erer is con­serv­ing his energy in prepa­ra­tion for the defense of his ATP World Tour Finals title in Lon­don at the end of November.

That leaves Nadal and Mur­ray to lead the tour into the penul­ti­mate ATP Mas­ters Series of the year, which already is under way in Shang­hai. Nadal is the No. 1 seed and would have been most people’s favorite to lift the title. Not anymore.

Quite apart from the fact that the Spaniard is devel­op­ing a dis­turb­ing habit of los­ing in finals — it has hap­pened seven times this year — Mur­ray is play­ing the kind of ten­nis that makes him, in Rafa’s words, “unstoppable.”

The sta­tis­tic that stands out from the final in Tokyo was the miserly four points Mur­ray relin­quished in the final set. Four points in a set against a fit Nadal? Mur­ray had beaten him 6–0 in the third in Rot­ter­dam in 2009, but Nadal was injured on that occa­sion. Not this time. He was sim­ply hit off the court.

It was not errors that cost the Spaniard the match. Apart from a cou­ple of missed ground­strokes and one awful bounced smash that he put into the net, the out­come was not decided by Nadal but by Murray.

The British No. 1 hit win­ners at will from every cor­ner of the court — fore­hand, back­hand, it didn’t mat­ter. They just left the game’s great­est defen­sive player stranded miles from where he would have expected him­self to be.

The second-to-last point of the match was typ­i­cal. Mur­ray, who had decided not to be quite as aggres­sive as he had been while out­play­ing David Fer­rer — another sup­pos­edly impreg­nable wall — in the semi­fi­nals, played a heavy top­spin fore­hand crosscourt.

Nadal returned off his back­hand with a hard-hit, high, bounc­ing shot that landed near the apex of Murray’s fore­hand cor­ner. On the run, Mur­ray leaped at it and, with both feet off the ground, pum­meled a fore­hand down the line. Nadal just stared at it. Front-row spec­ta­tors weren’t much far­ther away from the ball than he was.

So the ques­tion now is a mat­ter of sta­mina. Hav­ing won back-to-back titles — and given him­self a lit­tle extra exer­cise by wrap­ping up the Tokyo dou­bles title with his brother Jamie — can Mur­ray main­tain this level of per­for­mance through another, even tougher, week?

A first-round bye will give him a lit­tle extra respite, but he soon may find him­self fac­ing either Stan Wawrinka or, per­haps, Don­ald Young, who came through the qual­i­fy­ing along with another Amer­i­can, Ryan Har­ri­son. (Har­ri­son opens against Ser­bian Davis Cup star Vik­tor Troicki.)

Later, Mur­ray should find him­self play­ing skill­ful French­man Gilles Simon in the quar­ters and, pos­si­bly, Mardy Fish in the semis. Fish, who will be hop­ing to build still fur­ther on what has been the most suc­cess­ful year of his long career, will start against either South Africa’s big-serving Kevin Ander­son or tal­ented Aus­tralian teenager Bernard Tomic. As the No. 4 seed, Fish also has a first-round bye.

There was noth­ing much wrong with Nadal’s form in Japan until he ran into Mur­ray, but he will need to shrug off that loss and be at peak form if he is to get past big Czech Tomas Berdych, whom he beat in the 2010 Wim­ble­don final.

The pair should meet in the quar­ter­fi­nals, and Berdych is com­ing off a fine win in Bei­jing in which he helped his chances of qual­i­fy­ing for the top eight in Lon­don by beat­ing Croatia’s Marin Cilic from a set down in the final. Pro­vid­ing he wins, Nadal prob­a­bly would need to get past his com­pa­triot Fer­rer in the semifinals.

So another Nadal-Murray final is a pos­si­bil­ity, with Mur­ray know­ing that any­thing but vic­tory will mean he will drop points off the com­puter as he won this tour­na­ment last year. The Scot has announced a No. 3 fin­ish in the year-end rank­ings as his imme­di­ate goal, which would mean get­ting past Federer.

Much will depend on the state of Djokovic’s back. No word yet on whether he intends to play the ATP Mas­ters Series in Paris at the start of Novem­ber, but with so much accom­plished this year, I doubt he will push him­self. The body can only take so much, and his obvi­ously is in need of a rest.

Mean­while, Mur­ray will be the one ask­ing a lot of him­self, and his ded­i­cated team of train­ers will be work­ing over­time to ensure that their man is up for the challenge.

Related Posts:

• Valen­tine Brings Cir­cus to Boston
• Djokovic, Mur­ray Advance in Paris
• Fed­erer Wins in Switzer­land; Mur­ray Out
• Cow­boys RB Choice, Not Mur­ray, to Start vs. Rams
• Cow­boys RB Choice, Not Mur­ray, to Start vs. Rams

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