One slapped, spectacular forehand changed the whole emotion, psychology and momentum of a grand slam semi-final tonight, as Andy Murray, who had earlier lost an astonishing 14 points in succession, came back into the match to defeat Croatia’s Marin Cilic in four sets to reach the second Sunday of the Australian Open.
So Murray, the runner-up to Roger Federer at the US Open a couple of years ago, will at the weekend become the first Briton in the modern professional era to feature in two slam finals.
He will play the winner of tomorrow’s Australian Open semi-final between Federer, the most successful male tennis player in grand slam history, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the 2008 beaten finalist, and who, during last year’s tournament, was called a‘gollywog’ by Carol Thatcher in a BBC green room.
Just one more victory for Murray at Melbourne Park, against either a Swiss or a Frenchman, and the Scot will ensure that everyone in tennis can stop referencing Fred Perry’s 1936 US Open success as Britain’s last men’s grand slam singles title.
There were two matches on the Rod Laver Arena tonight; there was the Pre-Forehand Match and the Post-Forehand Match. Before Murray played that forehand, Cilic was drilling the ball through the court; the Croat was playing some fantastic tennis, and Murray was playing fetch, occasionally even left wafting his racket at the cool evening air.
For the first time in the tournament, Murray dropped a set. And Cilic looked the better player at the beginning of the second set, as he took that run of consecutive points to 14 points, some three and a half games without reply.
But soon Murray would have his moment of silvery brilliance, in the fifth game of the second set, when he had a break-point on Cilic’s serve, when he was brought into the service-box by a net-cord, he hit a volley, and was then lobbed. Murray chased back, spun round, and slapped the ball past Cilic’s racket.
They would have heard Murray’s giant growl-celebration at the Sydney Opera House, never mind in downtown Melbourne. “I didn’t realise that my mouth was so big,”
Murray said afterwards when he was shown a close-up of his roar during an on-court interview with Jim Courier.
The match changed after that forehand and that growl. Murray made good use of the momentum; and Cilic, who had played more than 18 hours of tennis to reach his first slam semi-final, tired rapidly. Game by game, he lost push in his legs, and power in his serve and his forehands. As the match continued, the quality of Murray’s tennis went up. In the final game of his 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 victory, he played the shot of the tournament so far when, after being forced wide, he struck a forehand around the net post and through the court for a winner.
That was a stroke worth showing again on the video screens. If that forehand of Murray’s in the fifth game of the second set had hit the net, gone wide, or bounced back off Cilic’s strings, who knows how this match would have played out. But Murray hit a winner, and is into the final of the Australian Open, so there is no point thinking too much about parallel tennis universes.
Cilic is from Medjugorje, a small hilltop place in Bosnia and Hercegovina where apparently the Virgin Mary has repeatedly appeared to people since the early 1980s. Millions of pilgrims have since visited, and there were suggestions before this semi-final that Cilic’s family had been walking up Medjugorje’s Apparition Hill to pray for Marin to beat Murray. And Murray thought he only had the ghost of Fred Perry to consider.
Just as Andy Roddick had predicted, Cilic stood on the baseline in the early stages, “directing traffic” by spanking his forehand into the corners. That inside-out forehand was especially effective. In the first set, Murray was often asked to scramble wide of one sideline before dashing across to the other side of the blue court. Murray, who had been unable to convert two breakpoints during Cilic’s opening service game, lost his serve in the fifth game when his forehand looped several metres long over the baseline.
The Scot looked down at his strings, giving them a dirty look of disapproval. In the next game, Murray had three more break-point chances on Cilic’s serve, but could not take one.
After Murray had held serve for 3-4, so began that stretch of 14 points in succession for his opponent. Cilic held serve to love, and then he broke Murray to love, finishing the set off with a forehand into the corner that had the Briton tracking across the baseline and playing a fresh-air forehand.
That was the first set that Murray lost in the tournament. Four more points followed off Cilic’s racket when he again won his serve to love in the opening game of the second set, and then he had Murray at 0-30 on his own delivery.
Still, Murray recovered to hold serve. Then came that forehand in the fifth game, and that break was good enough for the set. Murray controlled the third and fourth sets, with Cilic increasingly playing some tired tennis, some balls landing near the bottom of the net.
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