Australian Open: Sweet little sixteen for Federer

In a generally disappointing men’s tournament, world number one Roger Federer gave an imperious display in the final  to beat fifth seed Andy Murray 6-3 6-4 7-6 in two hours and forty one minutes to claim his fourth Australian Open crown and sixteenth Grand Slam title in total.

The Australian Open has historically been the poor relation as far as the slams are concerned with players having been put off by the time and the place. How many slams would Björn Borg have won if he’d been inclined to make the trip? This changed in the eighties, when the big names – McEnroe, Lendl, Wilander, etc. - started to take it seriously, figuring that, as far as the record books were concerned, a major title is a major title. Approximate parity with the other slams was achieved when it was moved from its Christmas berth to its current mid-January position in 1987 and the venue was changed from Kooyong grass courts to Melbourne Park hard courts in 1988.

Being the first slam of the new season and often played in sweltering conditions, it has tended to produce more irregular results and surprise winners / finalists than the others but not so this year, with the top players having done their fitness work in the off season and conditions being somewhat cooler than usual.

Federer and Murray had largely untroubled passages to the final. In the last sixteen, Federer crushed home favourite Lleyton Hewitt in three easy sets, a depressing déjà vu for Hewitt, whose retriever game is unfortunately tailor-made for the Swiss. Federer’s only test came in the quarters when it looked for a set and a half as if Nikolay Davydenko was going to continue his recent bogey-man role (having beaten Federer in the ATP Masters in London and recently in Doha) but Federer reeled off 13 games on the trot to get home in four sets and reach his 23rd consecutive Grand Slam semi-final – surely the single most impressive statistic in sport. His semi- felt more like a first round match, as his opponent, the charismatic Muhammed Ali lookalike tenth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, was all played out after a five-set quarter final win over Novak Djokovic.

Andy Murray meanwhile had been enjoying some literal giant-killing, seeing off 6’8 Kevin Anderson in the first round and 6’9 John Isner in the last sixteen (in the latter match he incredibly made only eight unforced errors), to set up a quarter final with Rafael Nadal. Many commentators considered the tennis played in this match to be the best of the tournament, as the Spaniard looked back to somewhere near his best, going toe-to-toe with Murray with his vicious topspin forehand recalibrated, before having to retire due to recurrent knee tendonitis when trailing 3-6 6-7 0-3. In the semi-finals, Murray met the Croatian fourteenth seed, 21 year-old Marin Cilic, who had come through four consecutive tough matches - beating the rising Aussie star Bernard Tomic in five sets in round two, the talented Swiss number two Wawrinka in four sets in round three, and then back-to-back five-setters against Del Potro and, in 30 degree heat, Andy Roddick in the quarters. Taking this into consideration, there was good evidence that Cilic will soon be challenging the top four. Unlike his compatriots past and present (Ivanisevic, Ancic, Karlovic...), he doesn’t look his (6’6) height on the court – from the flexible arching of the back on serve to his smooth court coverage, he is an excellent athlete and a fine technician. Cilic took the first set but the mentally tougher and physically fresher Murray imposed himself midway through the second after an inspirational point to break serve, and was fairly comfortable thereafter.

And so to the final. There had been much talk of the 74-year-wait since Fred Perry for another UK Grand Slam victory, to which Federer wasn’t above adding a few psychological barbs. This was likely to have been water off a duck’s back to the unsentimental Scot, who, whilst a diligent student of the game as regards his rival’s attributes and statistics, would probably see Fred Perry primarily as a sportswear brand and prefers here-and-now fact to possibility and mindgames.

After an early exchange of service breaks in the first set, the match started to take on the appearance of their last meeting, Federer’s round robin win in the ATP Masters in November, with the Swiss giving us his full repertoire of brushstrokes.  It is hard to pick which wing is stronger – the forehand, as biomechanics dictates for the vast majority of players, is the more forceful shot – his racquet head acceleration through the ball is famously so fast that special slo-mo is needed to view it, but also more prone to error. Most coaches these days advocate the two-handed backhand for extra control but seeing Federer’s rapier Henri Leconte-style single-hander in action, you’d wonder why anyone would want to use two hands. Murray was pulled this way and that and the Federer backhand down the line seemed to be the most consistent winning outcome of the rallies.

The first set having vanished, a break down in the second, an unlucky net cord with Federer serving at 3-2 30-30 and things were looking ominous for Murray, who was serving at a desperately low first serve percentage. But he dug in and came back from precarious positions in his next two service games to force Federer to at least serve out the set; 6-3 6-4 could easily have been 6-2 6-2.

There are times when, all other things being equal, it is simply a case of the player with the superior intrinsic talent holding sway. This was so with Federer in the first two sets. For his opponent to have a chance, his form must dip. When this happens, you sense it is down to ennui, that he is frustrated at having to play the same old shots all over without being able to show off something new. The start of the third set and there was a dip, he almost dropped his serve in the second game and then was broken at 3-2. Murray gave the crowd the wide-mouthed Scottish Lion roar, the freeze-frame of which has featured in many papers over the last week, and reinforced the break. However, he couldn’t see the thing through to take the set, was broken back at 5-3, and we were into a tie break.

Thank God for the tie-break, what a great invention – all the drama of a penalty shoot-out but at the same time meritocratic, i.e. not horribly random, because the basic composite action is the same and the winning post is set just right (have you ever heard anyone complain about the fairness of the tie-break?). This was a corker, with both men having their chances. Murray had bravely taken a 6-4 lead but crucially faltered when serving at 6-5, initially missing the first serve, recovering to manoeuvre himself into a winning position only to net a bread-and-butter forehand with the court at his mercy. After a near miss with a running forehand, Federer had an easier Championship point opportunity but fluffed his lines with an inexplicable rare error in shot selection, when he allowed Murray to pick-up a drop shot rather than simply swatting the ball away. Murray had a couple of further chances in his turn but couldn’t take it. Federer prevailed 13-11 and whooped with delight at his deserved victory.

Thus, Federer adds yet more weight to his G.O.A.T credentials, on the arena named after possibly the only player who could dispute that naff epithet, Rod Laver. Looking as swish and as fresh as at the start of the match, he was very much at home in the acceptance speech and was suitably gracious, commending his opponent and saying that his time would come, whilst intimating that, despite being a family man now, he himself would still be around for a while. His agenda this year will be the Grand Slam.

It was good to see Andy Murray letting it all hang out in his address – he has come a long way since  we first saw him as a stringy colt at Wimbledon 2005. The verdict of Tim Henman and Boris Becker in the BBC studio was that the final step required for Murray is a mental one – that he must shake off a certain default passivity and be more aggressive because he has all the raw shot-making ability to take the game to his opponent. True, but no-one could have beaten Federer today.
 
  
  

 

Comments

[Charles le Roi]

i reckon murray has what it takes and Federer will have occasional off days. with that baseline game you would think murray should be well suited to roland garros but his record there is the worst of all of the slams. is that because the spaniards are world beaters on clay?

[worldinmotion]

Yeah, full marks to Becker and Henman – the most insightful piece of TV punditry I’ve heard in some time.

But perhaps we now have to face the prospect that Murray will be 5-10% not good enough to win a slam as long as the Fed is around...