Andy Murray is through to the semi-finals of the French Open for the fourth time but, on the evidence of his mid-match dip before seeing off Richard Gasquet with a flourish, he will do well to get past the defending champion, Stan Wawrinka, on Friday.
While Murray was putting the finishing touches to his 5-7, 7-6 (7-3), 6-0, 6-2 win against the in-form Gasquet on Court Philippe Chatrier – a match the Frenchman several times threatened to put beyond the Scot’s reach – Wawrinka was celebrating a quicker, more comfortable 6-2, 6-1, 7-6 (9-7) quarter-final stroll against the unseeded Spaniard Albert Ramos‑Vinolas, on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
“There was some great tennis, some fun shots,” Murray said courtside after a postponed contest that lasted three hours and 23 minutes. That, together with the 11 hours and 51 minutes he had already invested in reaching the quarter-finals in four matches that occupied 16 sets, some of them grinding efforts early in the first week, will be a factor against the Swiss, one of the strongest players in the game.
Wawrinka’s court time of 12 hours nine minutes is nearly three hours shorter than Murray’s, and the world No2 is very conscious of that. “It was important to win the second set because it was very physical out there and it would have been tough to come back,” he said.
“I was using a lot of drop shots, and they were working early but I maybe played a few too many in the second. There were a lot of changes in momentum and I had to make a lot of adjustments.”
Murray said of the man standing between him and his first final at Roland Garros: “Stan has played great tennis here the past couple of years. We haven’t played for a little while and it’s going to be very difficult. Hopefully I can play my best tennis.”
The point about Murray’s campaign here is that he is playing his best tennis – alongside some inexplicably unfocused dross. He was again distracted for worryingly long stretches on another grey afternoon, before hitting an unstoppable rhythm, giving up two games in the final hour.
And how odd it was to see two such gifted players begin their match in a stadium with perhaps a third of the seats empty. This is a curiously French – or maybe Parisian – thing. Soon enough they would wander in, once they had judged the excitement worth their patronage – and this a contest between one of their imported favourites, Murray, and their own quixotic representative, Gasquet, who has been playing the best tennis of his late career to reach the quarter-finals of his own tournament for the first time.
Earlier in the day, Novak Djokovic finally got out of the fourth round but not without a stout battle against Roberto Bautista Agut that eventually ate up three hours and 12 minutes of this tournament’s crazy, shredded schedule.
The world No1 – and still the strong favourite to win the title – had a blip or two before rounding out their delayed match 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, 7-5. Backing up on Thursday because of the many rain delays, Djokovic will play the No7 seed, Tomas Berdych, who is still without a coach since parting company with Murray’s former assistant, Dani Vallverdu, but was sufficiently in control of his tennis to see off David Ferrer 6-3, 7-5, 6-3. Yet only a couple of weeks ago, the Czech was losing love and love to Belgium’s David Goffin in Rome.
It would be a significant surprise if the Serb did not reach the semi-finals, where he would play either the surging young Austrian Dominic Thiem or David Goffin, who, as Berdych and others would testify, is in rich form. Both returned to finish off their opponents in style, Thiem 6-2, 6-7 (7-2), 6-1, 6-4 against the unseeded Marcel Granollers, and Goffin against the coachless Ernests Gulbis, 4-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3.
Murray will take heart from coming through some rough patches for the third time in the tournament. But he will need to explain to his team – whom he again berated at length – why he is struggling to hold the pre-tournament form that led many to regard him as Djokovic’s main threat. It seems an age since he beat him comprehensively to win the Italian Open in Rome.
Murray held with an ace to ease himself into Wednesday’s match after waiting 24 hours to get on court – but the now respectably peopled stadium buzzed when Murray hit a double fault for 0-30, and went into a post-prandial frenzy when he hit long to blow his lead. At just the wrong time, the Scot’s touch and common sense deserted him simultaneously. He was scrapping about like a novice – and, whatever his remonstrations in the direction of Jamie Delgado and co, he had nobody to blame but himself for his third double fault to drop serve, and Gasquet duly served out the set.
Spiritually becalmed, Murray needed an adrenaline fix, but the match descended into an ugly mud wrestle, each man fighting his own game as well as his opponent. Gasquet was marginally the steadier.
One of the most extraordinary points of the tournament – for 15-0 in the seventh game – suggested Murray was about to break the nexus of mediocrity, but Gasquet held. Murray served for the set, but anger and frustration gnawed at him still.
Murray was two points from taking the set but Gasquet held with another sumptuous backhand too hot for Murray to handle. Murray had a look at Gasquet’s serve in the 11th game, but they went to the tie-break. Gasquet had won all his five tie-breaks this year – but not this one. Murray was revived.
From there to the end it was pretty much all Murray. However, he will probably not put this on any highlights reel – unless he is a total masochist.
When Djokovic and Agut resumed on Chatrier, the best player in the world took a one-set lead, then ground out the result, but not before Bautista Agut hit a level of intensity and tennis intelligence that caught him off guard.
