WHISPER IT, BUT HE LOOKS SET FOR FINAL
Peerless Murray dismisses Kyrgios
Andy Murray will not appreciate anybody saying it, but already it looks wise to keep your diary clear for 2pm on Sunday if you want to see him try to lift another Wimbledon trophy.
After an hour and 43 minutes of watching Murray play nick Kyrgios — too much of it looked like man against fanboy — the inescapable conclusion is that it will be a busy weekend for the world no 2.
For all the shortcomings of Kyrgios in subsiding to a 7-5, 6-1, 6-4 defeat, this was a commanding performance from Murray, who was supremely accomplished in giving his young disciple a schooling.
Ruthless, too, and it is difficult to see how his next opponent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, is going to blow him off course — or anyone else left in the decimated bottom half of the draw.
Murray has never made the last eight with such comfort, having not lost a set and dropped only 36 games with just three breaks of serve against him. Slightly ominously, Roger Federer has only dropped his service twice.
As early as his first return game, it was evident the mutual admiration society Kyrgios and Murray belong to was not going to be convening on the Centre Court late yesterday afternoon.
The young Australian likes to play at an uncommon lick, teeing up his serve with an absolute minimum of time and fuss.
But you were never going to hurry this Murray, who made it quite clear that he was going to proceed at the pace he wanted, in the way that novak djokovic and Rafael nadal have done for years.
More dramatic evidence of Murray’s mindset came in the 10th game when the ball popped up in his half of the court with Kyrgios a sitting duck at the net. He could have put it over or around him, but instead drove the ball straight at his opponent’s throat, causing him to raise his racket in self-defence.
Ivan Lendl (below) is so unobtrusive, sitting impassively up in the support box, that you could forget he was there.
But in that instant you knew the grizzled old Czech is back on the team, because this was straight out of his playbook.
There was a cursory gesture from Murray to apologise, while Kyrgios smiled in his direction and stuck his tongue out. Was it a coincidence that Murray turned the whole match on its head in the next game by immediately forcing three set points? Probably not. It is worth remembering that the world no 18 came into this match buoyant and had been especially impressive the previous day in taking the two sets needed to beat Feliciano Lopez. After what Murray did to him, he looked a broken man, later stifling tears. There was something almost poignant in Kyrgios admitting: ‘At times I don’t love the sport. But, you know, I don’t really know what else to do without it.’ There is an element of the lost boy about him, but he is a rare talent with a wonderfully loose arm that can generate easy power off both flanks and from the serve.
Almost nothing about the Australian as a player is conventional, from his curiously hunched figure prowling the baseline to his insistence on preparing for matches in the most unconventional way.
Murray organises his countdown to matches with the precision of a Swiss clock, but less than two hours before yesterday’s match Kyrgios was watching doubles on Court no 18.
you get the impression that four years from now he will either be a Grand Slam champion or hanging out with his mates at home, shooting baskets and earning a more conventional living.
As for Murray, he is the complete professional, now in his ninth consecutive Wimbledon quarterfinal or better.
That puts him fourth equal on the list since the game went ‘open’ in 1968, level with John McEnroe and Pete Sampras.
Whether he will join them in becoming a multiple Wimbledon winner remains to be seen and depends on him being able to handle the pressure.
He revealed later that one way he tries to avoid it is by watching any tennis on television with the sound turned off.
‘I don’t like to listen to anything that is being discussed around the tournament,’ he said, delighted at yesterday’s performance.
‘ This was one of my better matches for sure, but the trick is to maintain that level over the whole two weeks.’
At least Kyrgios showed what all the fuss over his talent is about in the first set, which was desperately close until the death.
Murray was unable to get more than two points in one game against his opponent’s serve.
Only after the first set did it all go awry, with the younger player admitting he was ‘pretty pathetic’ thereafter.
In fact, what he did was not much different to the granite man himself, djokovic, who on Friday night let go of the second set against Sam Querrey by the same scoreline — his mind evidently elsewhere.
Murray began to drag Kyrgios around as though he was on a string and the strain of having to play a two- day match at the weekend looked like it was setting in.
With the Scot in this form there are not, in truth, many other young players who would have resisted a great deal better.
We await the new generation but of those who are still rated as rank outsiders, only Lucas Pouille and Jiri Vesely are under 26.
Kyrgios kept Murray honest at the end by making him serve out the match, but the contest had looked over long before then.
Tsonga, who has only recently overcome a thigh injury, is the next to try to stop a home win at Wimbledon, three years on from the last one. But the biggest danger, you suspect, will come from whoever makes it through to meet him on Sunday.