Of the eight players left in the men’s draw of the 2016 US Open, Andy Murray has hit the highest pitch of excellence – and the fastest serve of his life – in allowing Grigor Dimitrov only five games in two hours of exhilarating tennis.
The Scot’s 141 mile-an-hour rocket on the eighth evening of the tournament was one of nine aces he put past the bewildered Bulgarian, who barely got into the match at any point. On Wednesday Murray plays the sixth seed and former finalist Kei Nishikori, who earlier put out the veteran Ivo Karlovic in three tough sets.
Murray said courtside: “I served 145 in San Jose once, but the next day they recalibrated the gun because it was completely wrong. I think I was lucky. I’ve never hit over 140 before. I don’t expect to do it again.”
He was consistently 10 miles an hour faster than Dimitrov on serve, and happily paid the price of five double faults as the world No22 floundered in the face of the unstoppable blizzard. Many of Murray’s biggest serves hit 135 miles and more.
“Tactically I played a good match,” he said. “I served very well when I got behind, very few unforced errors. I enjoy it in here [on Arthur Ashe Court], fantastic atmosphere. Tonight is the first night it’s been a little bit windy.
“Kei has been to the final here, we’ve had bunch of tough matches. I played a good match against him a few weeks ago [in the semi-finals of the Olympics en route to the gold medal] and I’ll need to play like that again.”
The novelty of looking up and seeing his old friend and coach Dani Vallverdu in his opponent’s box has worn off for Murray (the sought-after Venezuelan has joined Dimitrov after spells with Tomas Berdych and Juan Martín del Potro), but there will have been at least a suspicion that he had devised a canny plan for him. If so, it was not immediately apparent.
Dimitrov hit hard and flat to grab two break points inside the first two minutes but, within a quarter of an hour, the world No2 gradually began to make the gap between them in the rankings apparent.
Which is no slight on Dimitrov. He has picked up his level noticeably in recent weeks and played some excellent tennis to beat the talented Portuguese João Sousa in four sets two days ago when Murray was having problems with the 34-year-old Italian Paolo Lorenzi. Yet he was not remotely on form in this one-sided fourth-round match.
Dimitrov botched the simplest of smashes to drop serve in the fourth game, and Murray hit the accelerator. His serve, which went missing for two sets against Lorenzi, clicked to pleasing effect, and there was little his opponent could do to get back into the contest.
A wondrous backhand down the line took him to 5-1 and, on the half-hour, he served out to 15 with his third ace, that 141mph howitzer, which beat the 139mph serve he sent down in Cincinnati five years ago. Even if the speed gun was telling fibs, the ball hit the back wall like a bullet.
A new set can often invigorate a player on the wrong end of the scorecard, but Dimitrov, hitting fiercely but without discipline, won only a single point on his first serve. If his strategy was to hit his way out of trouble, it was bone-headed against such an outstanding defender and he’d bludgeoned his way to 0-3, to go eight games without success.
The crowd, keen for entertainment, urged Dimitrov on and, in spasms, he produced some wondrous passages of play; but not many of them added up to much.
He was glad of a loose Murray forehand to break back, but a double-fault immediately returned the favour. He hung on through a break point and deuce to hold in the eighth game, but there was no avoiding the relentless Murray tidal wave of shots.
The second set lost, Dimitrov was under pressure instantly at the start of the third. In 120 matches in slams, Murray has never lost after winning the first two sets; Dimitrov has never beaten anyone from two sets down. As John McEnroe observed, “Dimitrov is giving off the vibe out there of, ‘I don’t know what I am doing.’”
Murray did, though. When he chased down a perfectly respectable down-the-line forehand and thrashed it crosscourt for 3-0, Dimitrov could do no more than look on in wonder.
Darren Cahill, who briefly coached Murray, said, “In 10 years, I’m not sure I’ve seen him serve better or move better. Absolutely flawless.”
Vallverdu’s thoughts went unrecorded. He no doubt was happy enough for his old mate, if not for his new employer.
There was a final minor twist. “This has been such a blowout, the sky is crying,” McEnroe quipped as rain fell just as Murray was about to step up at 5-2 to serve for a place in the quarter-finals, his sixth on the spin here. They chose not to close the roof – and Murray completed the job when he forced a 43rd unforced error from Dimitrov, a wayward backhand. It pretty much summed up his wretched evening.
