MELBOURNE—For a good three hours, the semifinal between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray here was, to put it bluntly, a mess. Both players were fighting themselves as much as the guy across the net. Djokovic was battling his body, his nose, his allergies, his nerves. He was trying, with intermittent success, to settle down and let the athleticism flow like it had last year. It took him until the fourth set to shed all of his burdens and start looking like the best player in the world again.
As for Murray, he was fighting against his instincts toward safety and counter-punching, while trying his best to implement the more aggressive game plan that new coach Ivan Lendl wanted him to use. It made for a match that neither guy seemed prepared to step up and grab. After one point near the end of the fourth set, Djokovic walked away staggering in pain, while on the other side of the net, Murray was virtually on his knees screaming in anger. Lendl, perhaps channeling Mr. T's Clubber Lang character from Rocky III, gave Murray this pre-match nugget of wisdom: “It’s going to be painful,” he told his player. I guess the guy really does know what he's talking about.
One stat sums up the evening: There were 18 breaks of serve on 50 total break points. This was not an orderly contest. Still, Murray-Djokovic finally did cohere, and its fifth set offered a completely unforeseen turnaround that threatened to turn the match into a classic. The two wounded warriors—Djokovic said that “both of them went through a physical crisis” during the match—came together in the end to make the long, strange night worthwhile.
Let me start with Murray, who lost the match, 6-3, 3-6, 6-7 (4), 6-1, 7-5. We can debate how he approached the match tactically—47 winners and 86 unforced errors at least show that he went down swinging this time—but two particular moments are worth focusing on. One is an example of his characteristic flaw, while the other offers hope for change someday.
The first, and worst, of them came after Murray grabbed the lead for the first time. He ripped his way through the third-set tiebreaker—an ace at 3-3 and a roaring forehand winner three points later put a stamp on it. Now he was up two sets to one; how would he handle having nothing but the finish line in front of him? We didn't have to wait long for the answer. Serving in the first game of the fourth set, Murray suffered a quintessential brain cramp. Rather than finishing a sitter off with an overhead, he hesitated and plunked a swing volley over the baseline. A couple of wild unforced errors later and he was broken. A couple of games after that, he was tanking. Murray may have learned this maneuver from Lendl, who was famous for throwing sets and even matches early in his career. But he hasn’t mastered it yet. One thing you don’t want to do when you tank is let yourself be broken in the last game of the set. But Murray kept letting the balls go by even then, and Djokovic got to start the fifth serving. It proved to be pivotal.
“I guess maybe it was normal there was a letdown in the fourth set,” said Murray, who was thoughtful and positive in his press conference after what had to be a devastating defeat. “That was something I would have liked to have done better, though. I would like to have to played a better fourth set, get off to a better start.”
Murray was tired, but he was also a different player once he had the lead, a less intense and purposeful player—he didn’t know what to do with it.
The news wasn’t all bad for Andy. Something did change in the fifth set. He went down 2-5, then held. Until that point, he had had trouble recovering from his listlessness of the previous set. But as he set up to return serve, he began to fire himself up in a more genuine way than I’d seen from him. Murray was, for once, giving off sincere positive energy. Guess what happened? He played four brilliant points on Djokovic’s serve and won them all. Rod Laver Arena erupted. Hopefully Murray will remember that moment. He appeared, for one game—he hit four excellent returns and two blatant forehand winners—to have cracked the code to his potential.
As for Murray’s opponent, can we start calling Novak Djokovic the Benjamin Button of tennis? He starts matches as if he’s just finished playing five hard sets. He breathes deeply on the first changeover. He shuffles off court in the middle of the second set and sits down in an open-mouthed daze, as if he might not be able to answer the bell. Come the three-hour mark, though, the man suddenly has some spring in his step—he’s rounding into shape. After four hours, he’s sliding and grunting at full stretch, flipping up a perfect defensive lob, and then tearing toward the net to smack a forehand winner to break serve. He might as well be starting the match right then and there.
Djokovic’s old maladies have returned in Melbourne this week; he says he’s struggling with allergies. But there’s always been a mental component to these episodes as well. By the third-set tiebreaker tonight, Djokovic was laughing with his coach at his missed shots and joking around with the ball kids, with no signs of distress. It’s as if he has to work out his nerves, get to a point where he has nothing left to lose—such as being down two sets to one to Murray—and then he can let it rip, which is when he’s at his most dangerous.
Or, as Murray put it afterward, “He runs very, very well when he’s breathing heavily.” Murray said that it was something that he and Lendl “spoke about before the match.”
Djokovic ran very very well indeed in the fourth and fifth sets. He was back to his old defensive tricks, skidding across the baseline and breaking Murray at 3-2 with the defensive lob-forehand winner combination I mentioned above.
The match, after all that time, all of those rallies, all of the crises, came down to two consecutive shots. They were enough to describe the difference between these two players so far in their careers.
Murray followed up his break for 4-5 in the fifth with a strong hold. His momentum carried over to the next game, when he went up 15-40—two break points to serve for the final. Djokovic saved the first. On the second, the two players left exhaustion behind and fired 29 shots back and forth. Finally, pushed into a corner, Djokovic pulled the trigger and put a forehand on the line for a winner. It was this match’s version of the Shot. The shuffling, slicing, hurting Djokovic of three hours earlier was forgotten. The champ from 2011 had finally appeared.
Murray wasn’t finished. He earned another break point. The two began to rally, but rather than go big, as he had for much of the night, Murray stayed safe. Too safe: He sent a backhand lamely into the net. His chance had passed, and his decision to tank the last game of the fourth set came back to haunt him. Serving second, he was broken in the next game for the match.
Ten minutes later, a sweaty Murray was philosophical and even long-winded in the interview room. He said he was happy with his performance compared to his embarrassing loss to Djokovic in the final last year, and that he’s crossing his fingers he doesn’t suffer the same bottoming out, in confidence and motivation, that he has the last two springs. But Murray was honest enough to admit that he doesn’t know how he’s going to feel in a few days or weeks.
Meanwhile, No. 1 Djokovic moves on to meet No. 2 Rafael Nadal. Watching their wins these last two nights, it seemed that either match could have gone the other way. Djokovic could have missed that line-pasting forehand at break point. Nadal could have sent that desperation lob, hit when he was facing his own break in the final game against Federer, a few inches longer.
At the same time, though, this marks their third straight major final matchup, and one of them has appeared in the last seven Slam finals. It could have gone the other way for the world's two best players this time, but it was never likely.
