Nice guy Norrie getting job done
Less than 24 hours after the ugliness of the Nick Kyrgios-stefanos Tsitsipas furore, British No 1 Cameron Norrie demonstrated tennis’ more wholesome side as he surged into the quarter-finals with a straight-sets win over a good mate.
The post-match handshake between Norrie and his American opponent, Tommy Paul, was full of warmth and bonhomie, in contrast to the visible animosity we had seen from Kyrgios and Tsitsipas the previous night.
“Tommy is one of my best friends on the tour,” Norrie said afterwards. “I practise with him a lot. But it was obviously a huge match for both of us today so we had to put that aside.”
In a sport largely populated by oddballs, Norrie is that rare thing: a tennis player with no side to him. He shows up and delivers unstinting physical effort every day, whether or not his game is firing. Norrie represented New Zealand as a junior but switched his allegiance to Britain at 17, citing a lack of support from Tennis NZ.
Norrie was on song yesterday against Paul, an equally likeable fellow, whom he dispatched in straight sets.
Norrie’s reward is a quarter-final against David Goffin, the experienced Belgian who overcame Frances Tiafoe yesterday in a 4h 36m barn burner. It will be the first quarter-final played here by a British male since Andy Murray’s hip blew up five years ago.
Living up to Murray’s example is not always easy. As Norrie put it last night: “At the beginning of the tournament, you guys were asking me, ‘You’re British No 1, you got a lot of pressure, a lot of expectations on your shoulders’. So for me to play the way that I did in all my matches so far means a lot.
“Now I’m the last one standing. But I think it’s even more reason for everyone to get behind me. Even the atmosphere was great and it definitely helped me get over the line there. Especially on that last game, I was obviously pretty nervous. I was serving for my first quarter-final of a slam. I wanted to get it done.”
The tennis was of a high standard, especially when you consider that both men were making their maiden appearance in the fourth round of a slam.
Paul happens to be more interested in grass-court tennis than most of his compatriots, having grown up trying to emulate Tim Henman’s volleys. But in fact he spent most of the match on the baseline, where Norrie moved him around ruthlessly like a boxer working away at his opponent’s body.
We tend not to see too many clean winners from Norrie. He has never been a “wham-bam Cam”, preferring to grind
out points through sheer consistency. In the end, though, few can keep up with his physical relentlessness. From the first game, he dominated the rallies with his faintly Rafa-esque lefty forehand, using the angles beautifully to push Paul out of position.
Apart from a single late wobble, in
which Norrie dropped his serve for the first and only time at 4-3 in the third set, it was a commanding performance.
And when you consider the shift that Goffin put in on Court No 2, it ought to make Norrie slight favourite to reach the semifinals.