TENNIS:ANDY MURRAY had been planning a few days' practice in Barcelona this week to prepare for the Rome Masters which begins next Monday, but those intentions were put on hold after he performed much better than he had expected at the Monte Carlo Masters by reaching his first clay-court quarter-final, in which he beat Russia's Nikolay Davydenko, and then playing his best-ever tennis on clay against Rafael Nadal.
Inevitably Nadal won, by 6-2, 7-6 in Saturday’s semi, as he did in yesterday’s final against Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, by 6-3, 2-6, 6-1. But Murray impressed him. Nadal is inclined to be generous towards his opponents, though not disingenuous, so when he suggested Murray was going to “have his chances in the future to win at Roland Garros – in five weeks maybe, but for sure in the future”, there was reason to believe he meant it.
Yesterday Djokovic played even better than the Scot, making Nadal drop a set for the first time in this event since he won the 2006 final against Roger Federer. “If you are good player, you are good player on any surface, no? Everybody talked about my game not being suited to grass, and I have been in three finals,” said Nadal, the reigning Wimbledon champion. “Andy’s an amazing player. He has this ability, when he needs, to raise his game to a different level, and he is improving that level everywhere.”
Djokovic, under pressure from Murray for his number three world ranking, has experienced an often awkward 15 months since winning last year’s Australian Open, although now there are signs he is more competitive. Certainly he has begun to work a lot harder on his fitness and stamina, which have always been an issue.
This was Nadal’s fifth successive title here, and his 138th victory in 142 matches on the surface since the beginning of 2005, the year he won the first of his four French Open titles. Of his 34 trophy wins, 23 have been on clay. It is second nature.
For Murray it is not, though he has no need to change his game radically. “You have to try to hit a heavy ball and at the start of the match against Rafa I was trying to do it without really using my legs well,” he said. “At the end I started moving better and just trying to get him out of position rather than playing too defensively. Then I started playing more aggressively, he got further and further behind the baseline, and I managed to dictate more of the points.”
Which is pretty much what Djokovic did in the second set. Murray’s aggression came too late; Djokovic could not sustain his. Both will hope they have perhaps sown a few seeds of doubt in Nadal’s mind before the French Open, although the Spaniard has never lost a best-of-five-sets singles match on clay. That is the measure of the task facing all his opponents at Roland Garros, something Federer failed to solve even at the height of his powers.
Murray and Djokovic will hope to continue their attack on Nadal at the next two clay-court Masters events, in Rome and Madrid, the latter having taking the place of Hamburg. He is, after all, only human, though some – not least Federer – may have their doubts.
GuardianService
