By Bill Simons
Captivating, scintillating, explosive, mind-boggling.
Those words will do. The fifteen-game stretch at the end of Friday’s Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray semifinal was off the charts. Simply put, it was tennis and, dare we say sports, at its best. Up two sets and in total control, the Serb was showing the “best in class” play that’s enabled him to dominate the tour for the last six months. He’s won each big tournament he’s entered, come out on top of 27 matches in a row, is No. 1 by about six zillion points, and has already qualified for the year-end championships. He’d just made Rafa Nadal look human, and hadn’t lost a set during five earlier matches at Roland Garros. He’d beaten the Scot Murray seven times in a row and had the No. 3 seed on the ropes. Djokovic was taking the game to stratospheric levels. Even the seasoned Martina Navratilova was impressed: “Nobody has much strength when stretched … It allows him to create pace when he is stretched.”
All the while, Novak was stretching Murray to his limit. Up two sets and 3-2 in the third, Djokovic had a break point that would all but secure the win. But he botched his money shot, a standard backhand return of serve, sending it long.
He winced and showered himself with punishing (“How could you do that?”) scorn. Sometimes a single shot changes an entire match. Novak knows that. Andy knows that. The scoreboard knows that.
Murray suddenly became the raging Scot we have seen from the lawns of Wimbledon to New York’s hard courts. With speed and purpose, he sprinted from the net to the baseline, quickly pivoted and blasted an inspired cross-court forehand past the suddenly dazed Djokovic. He stepped in on his return, was more aggressive on his forehand, and displayed a new preeminence.
Suddenly, Murray was zoning, his belief soaring. He saved three break points and prevailed in epic rallies, including a 34-stroke exchange that appeared to gut Novak and impressed commentator Navratilova. “That’s a YouTube point, if ever I’ve seen one,” she said.
But then, despite jeers from the crowd, Djokovic won seven of the next eight points. Murray fought back, saving three break points and again punishing the reeling Serb with marathon rallies. Then, at 3-all in the fourth, mother nature broke into the action. A nasty storm was coming and play was suspended. Djokovic had endured some serious bad luck in his draw, having to face both Nadal and Murray in the quarters and semis. Now luck smiled on him.
When the players returned on a sunny Saturday, Murray kept his momentum. At 5-all, he broke Djokovic’s serve at love, and soon the match was tied at two-sets-all. Andy was within just a set of becoming the first Brit to reach the Roland Garros finals since Bunny Austin in 1937.
But ultimately, the break in play allowed Novak to brake Murray’s run. Having regrouped overnight, he went back to his free-of-gluten, free-of-doubt, option A: clinical dominance. Like he has done all year, and like he has against Andy many times recently, he simply pulled away in the final set, breaking serve twice to score an anticlimactic 6-3, 6-3, 5-7, 5-7, 6-1 victory.
With his streaks in place (28 straight matches, 16 straight clay wins and eight consecutive wins over Murray), the question now is whether the reigning Australian Open champ can regroup again, streak to his first Roland Garros title, and—along with Fred Perry, Don Budge, Rod Laver, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal—claim a career Grand Slam.
