Murray cuts down Dustin
You know it has been a good day for British tennis when three out of three players at wimbledon have already won and you have got Andy Murray running the anchor leg.
That even applies when the last part of the relay involves taking on a Jamaican, or at least someone of joint German and Jamaican heritage, like Dustin Brown.
Murray and his opponent proceeded to delight the Centre Court with a wonderful display of old school touch tennis around the net and, sure enough, it was the 30-year-old Scot who brought the baton home.
The world no 1 made it a guaranteed four Brits into the third round of the singles when he beat Brown 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 in an hour and 36 minutes, about half the time of the epic battle before him involving Jo konta and Donna Vekic.
The cup of the Centre Court crowd positively overflowed compared to 24 hours previously, and those measly mid- match withdrawals.
Murray’s matches so far have served as an antidote to that in terms of pure entertainment, and it promises to be quite a first week trilogy for him in that sense.
His next opponent will be Italian Fabio Fognini who, while being more orthodox than Brown or Alexander Bublik on Monday, is another crowd-pleaser and a shotmaker of rare ability.
He has beaten Murray three times out of six, including at May’s Italian open, although twice those wins have come on clay, when the odds are far more in the Italian’s favour than they will be on grass.
were Murray and konta to reach the second week it will obviously excite possibilities of a miraculous domestic double.
‘It would be amazing if that was the case. It’s unlikely but it’s possible,’ said Murray. ‘Jo has played extremely well these past 18 months and she is certainly good enough to win the tournament. I believe I can have a good run, I can win for sure, but it’s going to be difficult. It’s obviously exciting for fans in the country having players going deep in both the women’s and men’s draw.’
while there is still a real lack of depth in British tennis, Murray believes expectations should be high. ‘why not try and get five or six players into the quarter-finals of Slams?
It’s not to say that getting to the third round isn’t good but some of the players like kyle Edmund and Heather watson and Jo, they are capable of doing more than that.
‘So let’s aim to try to go further. There’s not a problem falling short of high targets.’
He will, as ever, need to concentrate on his own efforts, especially with his main rivals all seemingly running into timely form.
Yet as far as the first week is concerned he is struggling to remember when he has played a more varied trio of the flashy and the unorthodox.
‘I don’t think so,’ Murray said. ‘Fognini is an incredible shotmaker but he’s a slightly different sort of player from Dustin and Bublik. He’s more solid but can play incredible shots.
‘The first two matches it has been difficult to come up with game-plans but against him there will be a little more structure and strategy to the match, rather than just reacting and playing more instinctive kind of points, so it will be easier to prepare.’
Again there were questions about how Murray would move because of a hip problem, but they were all answered as far as Brown was concerned: ‘I hit a lot of drop- shots in the beginning, tried to get him in to see how the hip is, pull him into the forehand. If he has a problem, I don’t want to play against him when his hip is good.
‘Most of the time when he was hitting ridiculous shots, I just laughed and said, ‘‘Good job, let’s see if he does it again’’. Yeah, he did for three sets.’
In the game of the match, when Murray broke to go 3-2 up in the second set, Brown was reduced to applauding and then giving the thumbs up after a wondrous backhand pass was followed up by a precision lob.
while the deft exchanges around the net were the most eyecatching, Murray did most of the damage with his piercing returns and almost total lack of errors until midway through the third set.
It was exhibition stuff and the crowd lapped it up, but from here on in it is likely to be tougher, although Frenchman Lucas Pouille became the latest seed to be pulled from his path when he was beaten by Poland’s Jerzy Janowicz, a former semi-finalist.