Andy Murray is in his second Olympic singles final, this time against Juan Martín del Potro, after demoralising Kei Nishikori in two quick sets here on Saturday. Del Potro later battled for three hours and eight minutes to subdue Rafael Nadal 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 – so the Scot should have an edge in freshness in the final on Sunday, with history his travelling companion once again.
If Murray wins a second gold medal he will be the first person in the 15 Olympic Games at which tennis has had full recognition to assert his dominance back to back. No wonder he was so keen to be here, while some others thought it a trip not worth the effort.
The world No2 can legitimately claim, at 29, to be playing at the apex of his skills and ambitions. He has finally tamed clay over the past year or so, won a second Wimbledon title, reached the finals in Melbourne and Roland Garros and stands ready to return to the point where his rise began in London four years ago, in the singles final of the Olympic Games. That triumph catapulted him into his grand slam breakthrough at the 2012 US Open. Could the same be happening here?
Murray is on a winning sequence of 17, the longest of his career, and has lost only three times in 38 matches since Miami. Meanwhile Novak Djokovic, his conqueror in the Australian and French Opens, has succumbed to what appears to be a combination of emotional and physical meltdown – having withdrawn from the Cincinnati Open this week with a wrist injury and no certainty to line up at Flushing Meadows in a fortnight – so Murray, who heads for Cincinnati after Rio, can rightly be regarded as the best player in the world right now.
He will put a strong case for that if he wins on Sunday. He can seal it, if he wins New York. Beyond that? A knighthood in the New Year honours, perhaps. It was rumoured earlier in the summer (when his brother, Jamie, got a gong); Andy’s big day at the Palace may not be far away.
“The last four months definitely have been the best period of my career,” Murray agreed. “My job is to try and keep that going, keep up this consistency that I’ve had.
“I’ve played not my best tennis this week but found a way to win. Often in events you have matches like the one yesterday [when he was dragged into a three-set dog-fight after bagelling Steve Johnson] and the one against [Fabio] Fognini [surviving a similar blip]. If you can get through them, you can start to find your form and feel better as the tournament goes on.
“I’ve had that a few times. It happened at Queen’s [Club]. At Wimbledon I had that match against [Jo-Wilfried] Tsonga that really could have gone either way in the fifth set. I’m just happy I’ve come through those ones and made it a great, great few months.”
On a gorgeously warm afternoon on Centre Court Murray made sure of his place in the final by battering Nishikori 6-1, 6-4 with his most consistent and convincing tennis of the tournament. After wild fluctuations in form the previous couple of days Murray finally got it right from start to finish.
Nishikori might as well have phoned his score in for the first set, so off the pace was he. Thereafter the match went along more traditional lines.
Nishikori, first in the serving cycle, led until the fifth game of the second set, which he surrendered to love with a string of loose strokes, and the crowd picked up the simple but loud chorus of “Murray! Murray!”. It was not quite a samba beat: more rat‑a‑tat-tat, not dissimilar to the rhythm of his uncomplicated shot-making.
This was Murray at ease with his tennis. There was no wind to speak of, as there had been most of the week, no external factors or worries: just a determined but bamboozled opponent. Nishikori, nevertheless, was always dangerous, because when he hit cleanly off the ground it was with intent. He hung on through deuce to give himself a sliver of a chance at 3-4 but he was not convincing. His serve had gone to pot and there was desperation in his all-or-nothing groundstrokes.
After an hour and 12 minutes of efficient and calculated tennis Murray served for the match.
The largely pro-Murray crowd, nevertheless, went wild when Nishikori fought back to deuce (they wanted their money’s worth), and even crazier when Murray won the rally of the match with a stretched backhand down the line that left his Japanese opponent spent and stranded in mid-court. Nishikori obliged on the second match point with a closing unforced error, his 23rd. Murray hit 15, alongside 15 clean winners and three aces. It was a clinical and ruthless performance – just what he needed after the excitement of the previous two days.
In the second semi-final, as the fast‑setting sun began to sink over the nearby mountains, Nadal found himself in much choppier waters against Del Potro in the Battle of the Dodgy Wrists. The Spaniard, returning here after 10 weeks out, soaked up five aces and 17 clean winners, three off the serve, to take the first set.
The Argentinian needed only one break to take the second, and the third was rich with enough twists and turns to fill a Gabriel García Márquez novel, decided in the end as one suspected it might be: a tie-break.
