As the players milled about in the corridor near their locker rooms in the rabbit warren that runs under Rod Laver Arena, a sliver of excitement interrupted the hubbub of chat about rackets, weather, the speed of the court and what new restaurants were worth visiting.
Roger Federer was a set down against the Italian Simone Bolelli, whose style resembles the Swiss’s flowing elegance but whose achievements do not. All eyes were on the TV monitors.
It is moments such as these that grip the locker room. Those on the great man’s side of the draw, while pretending otherwise, watch like parched vultures when he struggles. At that moment, Andy Murray – on track to meet Federer in the quarter-finals, where the struggling Scot fell a year ago – joined us, looked up briefly at the drama unfolding on the screens and we headed, without any seeming acknowledgement from him of the potential upset, towards his next interview.
They are different beasts now, Federer and Murray. Both are in better shape, in different ways. Federer, at 33, is playing tennis as good as or better than he did when he beat Murray to win the last of his 17 majors, at Wimbledon in 2012; and Murray, at 27, has rediscovered enough zest and power to suggest it is pointless to dwell further on the back surgery he had in September 2013.
While Federer went on to repair the damage against Bolelli, winning in four sets and moving into the third round where another Italian, Andreas Seppi, will be waiting as much in hope as expectation, Murray shared his thoughts after two emphatic wins in a tournament where he has reached three finals in nine attempts without lifting the trophy.
A quite sublime collision of power and art in three sets did for the crude, volatile Marinko Matosevic thaton Wednesday afternoon in just an hour and 42 minutes. Mad Dog, as he is known – the 10th Australian on Murray’s hit list so far on Tour (without reply) – declared later without prompting: “He’s putting the beat down on all us Aussies, but to be fair he has a pretty good record against most guys. He can go all the way, for sure. Andy was way too good for me.”
Murray would agree without saying so. Players don’t do that – most notably Rafael Nadal, a potential roadblock for Murray in the semi-finals, who has excited much comment here by giving himself “no chance” of winning the title. Coming back from appendicitis and back and wrist injuries in 2014, he has fair reason to be cautious. Later the Spaniard would have to fight through five draining sets to get past the American qualifier Tim Smyczek.
João Sousa, the 25-year-old Portuguese Murray plays on Friday (and who lost to him in straight sets in the first round here two years ago), has trained with Nadal’s team for 10 years and knows him as well as any player on the Tour. He said after being gifted his second-round match by the heat-hit Martin Klizan out on Court 19 on Wednesday that the 28-year-old’s humility disguises his self-belief.
“I know very well Rafa,” he said. “Mentally for me, Rafa is the best in tennis. It is just unbelievable how he gets in his own world on court. But always he is very humble. He knows that he has to fight to win any match.
“Maybe the other guys they think they are better and they will always win. It’s unbelievable how humble he is. That is one of his best qualities.”
Murray is not looking that far ahead. He has Sousa to deal with and, despite having his number in three easy wins, there is not a suspicion of complacency. He looks around the locker room and he sees danger everywhere, most obviously in Melbourne among the increasingly buoyant Australian contingent.
“I hit with [Thanasi] Kokkinakis here,” he said, as we left the players’ enclave and headed into the late-afternoon heat for the first of his many television inquisitions before retiring to his hotel. “I really liked him. He had a good manner, he was calm, good attitude. I liked his game.”
Murray is a fan of Nadal’s Wimbledon conqueror, Nick Kyrgios, as well – as are most lovers of inventive tennis. And Murray knows better than most the traps and frustrations that lay ahead of them.
“There’s a bunch of guys. Players in the locker room always talk about the other younger players coming up,” said the Scot. “Obviously [Borna] Coric is very good as well. But it’s impossible to predict because I have no idea what their work ethics are like, how strong they are mentally. I don’t know the people they are surrounded with. There can be a lot of distractions along the way. And a few don’t make it, yeah.
“A lot of it depends on how much someone wants to be a professional tennis player. If they really want to, and that’s what they enjoy doing, then there’s a good chance they will make the most of it. But, if they prefer to have a good time, that’s fine as well – but they’re not going to be as successful as the ones who really want it.”
Murray famously has made those sacrifices since he hit the Tour at 18 off the back of winning the boys’ title at the US Open and with the considerable expectations of a nation on his then thin back. It is much broader now, packed with the sort of muscles that provide launching pads for some of the most powerful ground strokes in tennis.
On Wednesday, those shots, rifled with withering consistency at Matosevic, lit up Margaret Court Arena. A buzz went through the corridors where players stop and talk. Murray is back and more than a few of his peers and rivals are very much aware of it.
