Everything seemed to be in order. It all seemed to be working
out the way the gods of the sport had planned it. Andy Murray, the guy with the
classic tennis build and the cleverly nuanced game, was one point away from fending off Sam
Querrey, the overgrown, one-and-done power hitter. Subtlety and craftsmanship were about to triumph over raw force once again.
Then a funny thing happened. On match point, the overgrown
power hitter sat back, played patiently—you might even say he played subtly—and moved the craftsman around until he earned an unforced error. From
there, Querrey went on to defy the odds and gods and score what appeared on the surface
to be a victory for power over nuance. It was also a victory for that most
important but perversely unsung of strokes, the forehand. Querrey was better at it, and that’s why he won.
It’s generally agreed
that the backhand, perhaps because you have the choice of hitting it with one hand or two, is the shot that defines a player stylistically. By
comparison, the forehand is boringly utilitarian and one-dimensional, which means it gets comparatively little love. Meanwhile, it quietly gets more important every year. If the 1990s was the decade of the serve, today’s difference-making stroke is the
forehand. Of course, the serve is still key, and Querrey needed every
ace and unreturnable he could get yesterday to squeeze out a win. But where
Pete Sampras owned both the No. 1 ranking and the best serve in the game, the
two best players of recent vintage, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, are the two
players with the finest forehands. It may be that since no one serves and volleys anymore, the serve itself, disconnected from a following shot, can
no longer carry you as far. It’s the forehand that has picked up the slack. Rather than moving forward after his serve, Nadal exemplifies today’s game by immediately moving to his right, so he can get a crack at a forehand on the
rise.
In that sense, it was Querrey, rather than world No. 4
Murray, who looked like the model for men’s tennis in the near
future. He’s always had a big forehand, but I’ve never seen him do as much with it as he did in L.A. He gunned winners to each corner,
naturally, but he also controlled points by hooking it at an acute crosscourt angle or putting a little more air under it so it would bounce up and out of Murray’s
strike zone. Querrey did show signs that he’s becoming more well rounded; he
hit a perfect drop shot in the second-set tiebreaker that brought a sarcastic
smile from Murray, and he changed the pace on his serve in the deuce court
nicely. But while there’s more nuance to his game than first meets the eye, the American is not a master of all trades. His best volley is
still his drop volley, he’ll never be a nimble defender, and he wasn’t smooth
enough to move forward and execute a swinging volley on a break point in the
second set. No matter how much taller the men’s game gets, being 6-foot-6 and above will always have its drawbacks.
What Querrey did better than ever was compete. Like his
buddy John Isner, he’s becoming a strong match player, a
guy who finds ways to win. Querrey has always been calm, but a little well-timed anger and entitlement can
go a long way in tennis, and there was more of that from him in L.A. than I’ve
seen before. In the semifinals, Querrey blew the first set to Janko Tipsarevic
after holding five set points, then went down 1-5 in the second set tiebreaker. While he was frustrated, it was the frustration of
someone who thought he should rightfully be beating his opponent. That same confidence was on display in the final, even against a player as accomplished as Murray. Sam
had played him well at Wimbledon, and he was dictating the rallies in L.A.; he
just needed Murray to get a little tentative, to give him an opening, which is exactly what happened in the latter stages of the second set.
From Murray’s perspective, he did a lot of things well. He
defended maniacally, he used his own serve effectively—the kicker on the first ball
was particularly useful—and through two sets, he found
ways to scramble and stay alive. The key to me came not at match
point, but when Murray had a break point with Querrey serving at 3-4 in the
second set. The American fired a ball up the line and followed it in.
Murray, running well to his right as always, flicked a forehand crosscourt pass
that looked for a second like it was going to slip past his opponent for a
winner. But Querrey summoned a little extra speed, and a little better racquet
work, to come up with a winning stab volley. On another day, with less determination and confidence, Querrey could have easily lost that point and been content to say “too good” to his higher-ranked opponent.
What Murray didn’t do well is what he almost never does well: He
didn’t hit winners from the baseline. More specifically, he didn’t hit forehand winners. He had the edge on Querrey in every aspect of the game
except the two that count the most, the serve and the forehand—in philosophical
terms, Murray was the fox sprinting along the baseline, doing many little,
subtle things well, while Querrey was the hedgehog at the center of the court,
doing one big thing well. Murray may be in the market for a coach. If he is, he
should find someone who can teach him to take his forehand on the rise. That’s
a lot easier said than done, especially for someone who has had so much success
playing the game his way. His grip is fairly conservative and he makes contact fairly late. Both of those elements might have to be tweaked to give him a putaway forehand. Beyond that, though, it would require a change in mentality. Like Lleyton Hewitt, Murray is by nature a counter-puncher, an
anti-authoritarian type, a quick and scrappy guy who’s more comfortable
catching up to a hard-hit shot along the baseline than he is taking a mid-court
ball and creating something with it. Would a change in technique translate into
a change in mentality? It’s not impossible—unlike Hewitt, Murray has the size
and versatility to go on the offensive. But right now it’s hard to imagine.
What can we imagine for Querrey? Is he, after Berdych, Soderling,
and del Potro, the next wave in the big-man, big-forehand future that seems to be laid out before us? Can a guy called Q-Ball really run the table a major? The signs were good in Los Angeles, if not for a
Slam, at least for Masters contention. Beating a Top 5 guy was another small
step in a series of small progressive steps that have defined Querrey’s
late-blooming career. Then again, the signs didn’t look all that bad leading
into the French Open, either, but by the time he got to Paris he sounded ready
to quit tennis altogether. Querrey said then that he needed to manage his
schedule better and try not to play three weeks in a row. Naturally, that’s the propostion staring him in the face heading into Flushing Meadows. He’s scheduled
for D.C. this week, then back to back Masters in Toronto and Cincinnati. Last
year Querrey won the U.S. Open Series, then went out in the third round of the
Open itself.
We can only hope he finds a way to avoid a similar fate in
2010. Querrey has always been tall, but it’s his game that’s growing and branching out now. At some point he’ll need to redefine his ambitions accordingly and concentrate on peaking for the Masters and the majors. Only
in the those bigger arenas will we find out what
the tennis gods, the same gods who smiled on his power game on Sunday,
have in store for him.
A few weeks back we ranked the top-10 men’s players of the Open era. The post generated a good amount of debate and had numerous readers asking for Busted Racquet to keep going and extend the list to a top 20.
