When Roger Federer beat Andy Murray in the Wimbledon semi-finals seven weeks ago, the Swiss played tennis that was like water running steadily and unendingly from a tap on a summer’s day, effortlessly brilliant and soothing – until it dried up in the final against Novak Djokovic.
He has the same challenge at the 2015 US Open, which starts on Monday. To win a sixth title here at 34 Federer will in all probability meet Murray, whom he has just displaced as No2 in the world, in the semi-final, before a final against the Serb, who is so far in front of the field in the rankings as to be a dot on the landscape.
Federer acknowledged the scale of the task. He said: “Looking back at Wimbledon, maybe I peaked too much against Murray, then didn’t quite play as well against Djokovic. Still, Novak causes different problems to Murray. Maybe it’s also [about] match-ups and some days you just don’t feel as good. Of course, I hope to save my best for last and usually you play better against the best players because you just have no choice.”
But did he peak even before arriving, with two superb wins against Murray and Djokovic in Cincinnati last week? Federer, returning to the Tour after an extended post-Wimbledon break, was irresistible there in both matches, reviving for his American audience memories of his uninterrupted run to finals at Flushing Meadows that began with a win over Lleyton Hewitt in 2004 and ended with defeat by Juan Martín del Potro in 2009.
Hewitt is here in his farewell major while Del Potro is absent, still coping with a wrist injury that has cut a large chunk out of his career. Federer has seen them all come and go. he will hope that the unseeded Argentinian Leonardo Mayer, ranked No33 in the world, does not make all speculation about a grab at his 18th major irrelevant.
For Murray New York is significant for another reason: it was here in 2012 that he beat Djokovic in the final to announce properly his arrival at the summit of the game, having warmed up with an emotion-charged victory over Federer to win gold at the London Olympics.
It has, though, always been a special place for the Scot, ever since he won the boys’ championship at the age of 17 in 2004, and he embraces the city’s raucousness, which seems to invade his spirit, lifting him to the heights when the noise is at its loudest.
However, unusually for a first-round match, the volume is likely to be near maximum when he plays Nick Kyrgios , possibly at night under the early shell of the new roof on Arthur Ashe stadium.
When the draw was made, Murray indicated through his team that he did not want to be bombarded by questions about Kyrgios’s behaviour, a reasonable sentiment perhaps, given there was not a lot more to say in the wake of the Australian’s sledging of Stan Wawrinka in Montreal at the start of the month, but wholly unrealistic.
Rammed up against a pylon in the players’ garden, Murray fielded familiar inquiries on Kyrgios with grace and patience. Later, away from the screaming of overhead planes flying in and out of nearby LaGuardia airport, he addressed the issue of whether or not a wider audience should even have been party to the argument.
He said: “For me it’s like when I watch football on the TV, or basketball or team sports, they dumb the microphones down for the players, and when the fans are shouting stuff from the front rows of the crowd. They don’t want people that are listening back home to hear what the players are saying – or what the fans are saying – when they’re on the court.
“And I feel that often in tennis [television is] desperate to hear what everyone’s saying all of the time. The women have now got the coaching on the court and stuff … I’m not against having the microphones on the court, I just think that it’s quite different to other sports.”
What is almost a nailed-down certainty is that there will be no reason to turn the microphones down for this match. Murray respects Kyrgios’s talent and is prepared to give him some slack as a young sports celebrity – although he is adamant that what he said to Wawrinka was wrong and it was not an isolated incident.
The reason, probably, that Murray did not initially want to engage in this lingering debate is that it is a distraction from his purpose here: to win the title for a second time. For all that Kyrgios presents serious danger, Murray, in the most consistent form of his career, should have enough experience and game to see him off, perhaps in four sets.
Kyrgios’s departure would be a blow for those seeking the fresh excitement of youth but Murray going out of a major in the first round for the first time since losing to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Melbourne seven years ago would deal the tournament a deeper wound. He is, after all, more likely than Kyrgios to be there towards the end – along with Federer and Djokovic.
