Murray’s comfort on clay bodes well for French Open
Red-hot Scot could be match to Djokovic
LONDON —The French Open is a two-horse race no longer. Over the past three years, we have become used to watching Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic compete for the Coupe des Mousquetaires. But the landscape changed Sunday in Madrid when Andy Murray dispatched Nadal with almost contemptuous ease.
Previously hesitant on the surface, Murray has hit a vein of red-hot form just in time for the busiest part of the season. According to coach Patrick Mouratoglou, it is now the Scot, rather than nine-time champion Nadal, who represents the biggest threat to Djokovic’s lifelong ambition of winning at Roland Garros.
“I would say that Andy is one of the two big favourites for the French Open just behind Novak,” said Mouratoglou, who works with the world No. 1 Serena Williams.
“He is just in a really good place at the moment. He is happy with his life and he believes in his game.
“Rafa, for me, isn’t a favourite for Roland Garros at all. When Rafa was struggling on the hard courts, everybody thought he would be OK by the time he got on clay. But that has not been the case: he didn’t even make the final in Monte Carlo or Barcelona. You can say that it’s different in Paris, and it’s different when it’s best-of-five, but Rafa has not been his usual self so far this season.”
Murray’s 6-3, 6-2 victory on Sunday arguably represented the Scot’s finest moment on the ATP Tour, as opposed to the grand slams and the Olympic Games. You have to go back three years for the last time anybody — Fernando Verdasco, in that case — beat the King of Clay in Madrid.
It was far from being a great match. Nadal never found any sort of rhythm and shanked a large number of straightforward shots. But still, a Masters title is no easy feat, and the statistics are extraordinary: Murray came to Madrid with just one career win against a top-10 opponent on this surface, and then proceeded to take out Milos Raonic (No. 4), Kei Nishikori (No. 6) and Nadal (No. 7) in successive days without dropping a set.
How do we explain the turnaround?
“Marriage works,” Murray wrote on the camera lens as he prepared to receive Madrid’s strange totem-like trophy.
Yet there are physical reasons, too.
Thanks to the improvement in his back this year, he was able to put in a 10day training block in Barcelona with his new assistant coach Jonas Bjorkman. It was “the first time in a while,” he says, that his body was strong enough to cope with such a gruelling program. Now the effects are showing. He has so much time on the ball that opponents are unsure how to break him down.
“I have always thought Andy could be a good clay player but the main thing for me at the moment is he has got his tactics right,” Marian Vajda, Djokovic’s longserving coach, said.
“He is so strong. He has got himself so fit that he can stay in the long rallies and he enjoys that kind of thing. Plus his second serve has got a lot better and that was a big factor.”
Mouratoglou agrees, while expressing surprise that it has taken this long for everyone to clock on to Murray’s claycourt potential.