Murray keeps home fans burning
His two-set deficit in the Wimbledon quarterfinals erased, Andy Murray evened the fifth at 4-4, looked into the centre court stands and shook his fist.
‘‘Come on!’’ he bellowed. ‘‘Come on, now!’’
Already stirred up by the Scot’s comeback from a two-set deficit, the 15,000 spectators stood and roared even louder.
It has been 77 years since a British man won the country’s grand slam tournament and Murray is giving the locals reason to believe that wait will end on Monday (NZ time).
Buoyed by a boisterous, partisan crowd, the second seed got past 54th-ranked Fernando Verdasco, of Spain, 4-6 3-6 6-1 6-4 7-5 yesterday to complete his seventh career comeback after trailing by two sets.
‘‘Great atmosphere at the end of the match . . . I love it when it’s like that. It was extremely noisy,’’ said Murray, who lost last year’s Wimbledon final to Roger Federer.
Into the semifinals at the All England Club for the fifth consecutive year, Murray will face No 24 seed Jerzy Janowicz, of Poland, tomorrow. The other semifinal is No 1 Novak Djokovic, of Serbia, against No 8 Juan Martin del Potro, of Argentina.
‘‘For sure, [the] crowd will not really help me but we’ll see how it’s going to be,’’ said Janowicz, the first Polish man to reach the final four at a major tournament.
‘‘This is my first semifinal ever, so I don’t know what to expect.
‘‘The rest of the guys left are more accustomed to being at this stage,’’ Janowicz said.
Especially Djokovic, who extended his streak to 13 consecutive grand slam semifinals – second in history only to Federer’s 23 – by beating No 7 Tomas Berdych 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 6-3.
Murray was far from his best for the first hour against Verdasco, whose powerful serves and go-forthe-lines big cuts made things difficult. But the Scot has matured as a tennis player. Twelve months ago, he wept after losing to Federer in the Wimbledon final, dropping to 0-4 in grand slam title matches.
Four weeks later, also at the All England Club, Murray defeated Federer for an Olympic gold medal. And then he finally won a major championship, beating Djokovic in five sets at the US Open.
Murray then reached a third consecutive grand slam final at the Australian Open in January but lost to Djokovic there.
All of that helped Murray against Verdasco.
‘‘When you play more and more matches, and gain more experience, you understand how to turn matches around, and how to change the momentum of games,’’ the 26-year-old said.