Edmund comes of age as he sees off Istomin
Fresh approach paying dividends for British No2 Dimitrov and Wozniacki through despite scares
What a time to come of age. While Andy Murray boarded a flight back to England last night, his young protege Kyle Edmund was looking at a juicy draw. With no seeds to face until the quarter-final, Edmund stands on course to reach the second week of the Australian Open for the first time.
Edmund has played Robin to Murray’s Batman for years. Mildmannered and softly-spoken, he had a battering ram of a forehand up his sleeve, yet always seemed slightly coy about using it.
But something has changed in the off-season. Or, rather, a lot of things have changed.
Edmund has moved his address, from Beverley to the Bahamas. He has switched his management, joining the Starwing stable that is also home to Stan Wawrinka and Gael Monfils. And he has hired Fredrik Rosengren, a Swedish coach who defies the national stereotype by buzzing with energy and anxiety at courtside.
Above all, Edmund has changed his attitude. The mouse has begun to roar. It began in Brisbane, with tight but significant wins over fellow up-and-comers Denis Shapovalov and Hyeon Chung. Then, here in Melbourne, he sprung the biggest surprise of the opening round when he overcame 11th seed Kevin Anderson – the runner-up at September’s US Open – in a brutal five-set struggle.
The challenge yesterday was to back that up against Denis Istomin, the talented Uzbek who scored the upset of last year’s Australian Open when he ousted Novak Djokovic in the second round. It would have been understandable, following a career-best win on Monday, for there to be a letdown. What we saw instead was a man inspired.
The sun might have been shining on Court 13, but winners rained down on Istomin. Edmund was always in control, using his clubbing forehand to shorten rallies, and landing two-thirds of his first serves – a figure high enough to make sure that he never faced a break point. Istomin, who took a lengthy medical timeout to have his ankles taped, soon became demoralised and went down to a 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 defeat in just 1hr 29min.
One of Edmund’s New Year resolutions was to pick up more cheap points on his serve. Unlike most of us, he has kept to his promise so far. “In golf, you can hit the ball on the range as sweet as anything,” he told the BBC yesterday. “But once it comes to the actual match, that’s where you want to do it. Same in tennis. Under pressure, that’s when you need a cheap point.”
At the start of the tournament, there were four seeds standing between the 23-year-old and the quarter-final. Not one of them survived the opening day, which leaves him with an unexpected third-round opponent in world No 61 Nikoloz Basilashvili, of Georgia.
Tomorrow is forecast to be the hottest day of the tournament, so the ball will be fizzing through the air even faster than usual. Basilashvili plays with eyeballs-out aggression on every point, which means that few rallies will extend past half-a-dozen shots. “He has errors,” said Edmund, “but he has lots of winners.”
These two men have played once before, at the 2016 French Open, in a meeting that helped to kick-start Edmund’s career. At that stage, he was so prone to cramping up in best-of-five-set matches that his management team were searching for some underlying physical issue. But that all changed after he over- powered Basilashvili in a 2hr 47min clay-court grind.
“I remember the match,” said Edmund, for he has a computer-like memory for past encounters. “The first two sets were very long, then I broke him twice to win the third, and he tapped out in the fourth – which was like 15 or 20 minutes. I was young and I didn’t have a huge amount of five-set experience, so it gives you confidence when you outlast people.
“Nerves play a big part in cramping as well,” Edmund added. “When you are younger, you are in unknown territory and you don’t know how you are going to react or feel. Whereas when you do it over and over again, you just sort of go on autopilot.”
Edmund’s first priority in the heat tomorrow will be to make sure he has applied enough sun cream. “My mum gives me a lecture if I don’t,” he explained.
But there is a wonderful opportunity here. If he beats Basilashvili, his fourth-round match will be against 6ft 11in serving machine Ivo Karlovic or metronomic Italian Andreas Seppi – both good players, but still relatively obscure opponents for the middle Sunday of a grand slam.
The most likely quarter-finalist in Edmund’s section is Grigor Dimitrov, the world No3, who survived a scare yesterday against American wild-card Mackenzie Mcdonald as he inched through 8-6 in the fifth set.
In fact, it was a day of near-upsets. Caroline Wozniacki was down 5-1, 15-40 in the decider against grand-slam debutante Jana Fett before pulling off a stirring recovery, while Jo-wilfried Tsonga, the men’s 15th seed, was involved in a riveting match with 18-year-old Shapovalov. After 3hr 37min of close combat, the more experienced Tsonga triumphed by a 3-6, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6, 7-5 scoreline.