ANDY ENJOYS A WILD RIDE
Champion has faced a strange mix of eccentric characters in week one, but history says he will breeze past Frenchman Paire
IT IS turning out to be a magic carpet ride through the ranks of Wimbledon’s wacky and weird for Andy Murray, who can take comfort from the fact that the eccentricities of his next opponent include a tendency to mentally check out of tennis matches.
Benoit Paire is the Frenchman who admitted last year that ‘physically sometimes I’m paralysed because of the stress’.
He proceeded to demonstrate the fact a few days later by losing to Murray from an apparently unassailable position, a set and two service breaks ahead.
‘He was very, very unpredictable,’ Murray said of Paire that hot day in Monte Carlo. It was some understatement. Paire had racked up 52 unforced errors by the end.
The Wimbledon draw could hardly have been kinder to the top seed, who did not begin to pretend that third-round victory over the imploding Italian Fabio Fognini on Friday night was down to him alone.
The BBC felt the four-set victory was a triumph of superhuman achievement.
‘And that’s why he got a knighthood,’ proclaimed commentator Simon Reed.
Murray had some more prosaic explanations: ‘In the first set he served three double faults in a row. That’s nothing to do with my good play.’
It says something for the British player’s kaleidoscope of opponents that German Dustin Brown, demonstrating an addiction to drop shots in the second round, is the nearest thing to normality that Murray has encountered here so far this year.
Paire’s fragility belongs to the bigger story of Murray’s remarkable record against French players who don’t respond well to the visceral resolve that saw off Fognini.
Murray has won 25 straight matches against French players and has not lost one since Gilles Simon ushered him out of the Rotterdam Open in February 2015. You must go right back to his 2008 Australian Open defeat by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga for a Grand Slam loss to French opposition. The win-lost record is 96-14. No Frenchman has ever beaten him at Wimbledon.
‘There have been a lot of matches I’ve won against French players from losing positions as well, so it’s not like I’ve killed them in the matches that I’ve played,’ Murray reflected. ‘There have been a lot of close matches and I’ve just managed to get through, but I’ve no idea exactly why that is.’
It is hard to avoid the impression that the close French encounters have gone Murray’s way because the nation’s players have lacked his cussedness. Expectation weighs heavy for them. It’s hard to overstate how big this sport is in France, whose substantial ranks of journalists are here again, looking as always for signs of another French grand slam winner. There have been none since Yannick Noah in Paris, 34 years ago.
Murray should not be seriously stretched until a semi-final that is likely to bring Rafael Nadal or Marin Cilic into his path. Nadal is the member of the dominant men’s quartet who has most exceeded expectations in the first week. His forehand looks monumentally huge. The weather has suited him.
Murray has been at par. He was well below it for periods against Fognini, finding the Italian’s ground shots difficult to pick because of the power the Italian generates from minimal back-lift. But all the champions will tell you that the manner of reaching week two is insignificant. It is only the getting there that counts. Though Murray’s walking limp was pronounced on court on Friday and images captured him rubbing a sore knee in training yesterday, his movement across court does not point to a player impeded by injury.
He is seeking what Wimbledon distractions he can, finishing the eight-episode American crime drama, The Night Of, on Thursday, but you sense that he is experiencing the usual intoxication of this place and can barely stay away. Murray joined Olympians and Paralympians in the Centre Court’s Royal Box yesterday, taking applause that lasted so long he seemed embarrassed.
He even seemed to have mixed feelings about a weekend off. ‘Most athletes like routine, so this is a bit different to what we’re used to,’ he said.
There was another six-hour working stint for him, leaving his Wimbledon house at 10.30am for an hour with his physio Shane Annun, 40-minute warmup, practice, then ice bath.
Paire’s big serve and powerful backhand present a challenge tomorrow and Murray will not have forgotten what a struggle he faced before the 28-year-old world No 46 suffered his crisis of confidence in Monaco.
Paire annihilated Murray’s second serve and tormented him with smashes, superb volleys and delicate chips.
But Murray did not obscure the fact that the Frenchman’s mental fragility is exploitable.
‘When you’re playing guys that are maybe a bit up and down, if you can keep consistent pressure on them by serving well and not giving them the opportunities, then pressure builds over time,’ he said.
‘You have to capitalise when they have little lulls. I will try to do that.’