Dream team Murray and Serena to play mixed doubles
Scot joins forces with American in doubles Herbert struggling with injury for men’s event
Will two Wimbledon singles champions make a champion team? That is the question only Andy Murray and Serena Williams will be able to answer this week, after it was confirmed last night they will be partners in the mixed doubles event.
After watching Williams tease reporters with her enigmatic answers over the past three days, this American-scottish combination feels like a tennis romcom: Gregory’s Girl with rackets. Once they get on court, though, they are sure to be seen as serious contenders.
Williams may not be the favourite to lift this year’s Venus Rosewater Dish, because of the knee injury that has restricted her to just 12 completed matches this season. But after four weeks of rest, treatment and rehab in Paris, she has arrived at Wimbledon feeling stronger physically than she has all year.
For Murray, who is also feeling his way back from the insertion of a metal hip in January, this feels like a successful courtship – and a coup to have enticed the greatest player of all time to play at his side.
If ‘Murriams’ – as the new combination must surely be dubbed – can fight through their first couple of rounds, they are only likely to grow stronger with each successive outing. On the other hand, there might be a possibility of them being caught cold by an established pair of doubles specialists. We will not find out the draw until today, after the entry list has closed at 11am.
A week ago, Murray sounded uncertain about playing the mixed event, in case his body happened to be overloaded by the commitments of two separate draws. He only made up his mind after seeing a forecast that showed the weather set fair, and thus reduced the likelihood of rain affecting the schedule.
Now, as he prepares to enter the men’s doubles event tomorrow with Pierre-hugues Herbert, he must be glad that he chose to double up. Herbert was not moving with any great authority during a rapid first-round singles defeat by Kevin Anderson. There is also the theory that a high-quality singles player is better off joining forces with one of his or her own, as Murray did with Feliciano Lopez at Queen’s. A doubles specialist is likely to use patterns and formulas rather than playing by instinct.
One suspects Murray has taken advice from his elder brother Jamie, who has won four mixed-doubles titles at grand-slam level. The key to this format, Jamie Murray always said, was to find the best partner.
Andy Murray and Williams attended the Wimbledon Champions’ Dinner together in 2016, and held up their respective singles trophies for the cameras. Perhaps they will be hoisting a different piece of silverware on Sunday week.
It has been a good week for Serena Williams. Just ahead of Wimbledon, the 37-year-old achieved a long-held ambition by appearing on the iconic American Wheaties cereal box – slogan “The Breakfast of Champions”. “I have dreamt of this,” she wrote on Instagram.
Until now, it was arguably the professional highlight of Williams’s 2019.
It has been a year characterised by injury; the knee problem that forced her to withdraw from the Miami Open in March and the Italian Open in May. To the surprise of many, she entered the French Open – having been photographed just days before in a wheelchair at Disneyland Paris – but was beaten in the third round.
That was on June 1. According to her coach, Patrick Moratoglou, Williams then took two weeks off and is now “pain free”.
That means the 11th seed had just two weeks of uninterrupted practice before Wimbledon – hardly the ideal conditions for trying to win your 24th grand slam.
All in all, heading into SW19, Williams had played just 12 matches this year. Only four of the other 127 women in the draw had fewer under their belts.
It means where once her firstround victory would have merited little attention, there is now no such thing as a routine win for the player they call GOAT. It is one reason why she has decided to form a mixed doubles partnership with Andy Murray. As Williams herself put it in her press conference yesterday: “I could use the extra matches.”
She admitted that the two were “a lot alike on the court” and praised the Briton’s work ethic. Murray this week called her “arguably the best player ever”. Indeed, at her peak, few opponents could find a way back against Williams.
That Giulia Gatto-monticone was able to break in the second set and level the match at 5-5 showed chinks in the Williams armour will take time to heal. It was a performance that, to be generous, lacked rhythm.
Despite the 6-2 scoreline, Williams seemed cautious in the first set, ploughing balls into the net. But when Gatto-monticone found her form in the second, her level rose, with serves that topped 125mph. Williams has always thrived on a fight.
Not that the 31-year-old Italian ever looked deadly. Ranked 161 in the world, she was making her Wimbledon debut after 17 years on the women’s tour. This was Williams’s 93rd match win at SW19, in her 19th appearance.
She wore a Nike swoosh brooch – or “broosh” as it has been called – featuring 34 Swarovski crystals to signify her age last time that she won Wimbledon, in 2016, which flashed in the sunlight. One wonders how long it will be before an opponent blames it for putting them off.
And she will face tough opponents. Williams is in what former player Renae Stubbs has termed the “group of death”, with her half of the draw featuring Angelique Kerber and Ashleigh Barty – whom Williams did not realise had become world No 1, so focused was she on her recovery.
That is the chatter from her camp, in any case.
Moratoglou has been talking up her chances to anyone who will listen, while Williams took the unusual step of giving a pre-wimbledon interview in which she reiterated the “pain free” message.
She did not appear affected by her injury yesterday. Indeed, it was Gatto-monticone’s left knee that was heavily strapped. Physically, Williams seemed stronger than we have seen her in the 22 months since the complicated birth of daughter Olympia.
But some have questioned her commitment, including Billie Jean King, who last week said Williams needed to “focus” if she wanted to equal Margaret Court’s 24-slam record. “She’s got business, a baby, she’s trying to help gender equality,” King said. “I would like to see her put everything else aside from [tennis]. It’s worth it if you want it”.
Williams certainly appeared to want it yesterday – shouting and pumping her fist as she set up match point. You would have thought she had made it into the final, not the second round, of the tournament.
It was, on reflection, a little Andy Murray-like.
“Above all, he really stands out, he really speaks up about women’s issues no matter what,” Williams said at her press conference. “You can tell he has a really strong woman in his life. I think, above all, that is just fantastic.”