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Andy Murray into Rome Open quarter-finals with win over Jürgen Melzer Andy Murray into Italian Open quarter-finals with win over Jürgen Melzer
(about 2 hours later)
Andy Murray could not have had a better workout ahead of the quarter-finals of the Rome Open than the hour and 41 minutes the stubborn Jürgen Melzer gave him before the Scot struck his sixth ace to win 7-6, 6-4 under warm skies on Thursday. Andy Murray has had worse birthdays. Two of them were spiritually and physically draining – when he had to quit a match for the only times in his career – while Thursday's here, his 27th, brought relief and encouragement, not to mention a strawberry cake heaving with enough calories to sink a gym.
Murray, celebrating his 27th birthday, looked in good shape for the French Open, which starts a week on Sunday. The lean-muscled Scot took not a celebrity slice, of course. He was, after all, getting ready to play the world No1 Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals of the Italian Open, a clash so rare that it took a quick squint at the record books again to confirm they had not met on court since Murray beat the Spaniard in the final in Tokyo in 2011, bagelling him in the final set.
On the same Grandstand court where Richard Gasquet beat him in three sets two years ago – and where Maria Sharapova this week complained of the uneven and perilous bounce – Murray met an opponent high on confidence after good wins over John Isner and Marin Cilic, both well clear of the Austrian in the rankings, provisionally rated at 67 after his recent return from seven months out with a shoulder injury. It was not just the bonhomie of a birthday away from home that brought a smile to Murray's face on Thursday but a return to something like his best clay tennis in a little while during a tricky 7-6, 6-4 win over the Austrian left-hander Jürgen Melzer.
There was nothing wrong with Melzer's strong left-arm on Thursday, as he mixed power and touch to bring the best out of Murray in a first set rich in quality and incident. As for those birthday blues, Murray winced when he recalled: "The two times I've had to retire on the tour have strangely been on my birthday. One of them I was up 5-1 against Filippo Volandri in Hamburg [in 2007] and the other was here when I was a set all [last year against Marcel Granollers] so it's nice to have a more pleasant experience on court."
After breaking Murray to love in the first three minutes, Melzer, holding to 30 and stretching the world No 8 to lead 3-1, must have entertained thoughts of interrupting his 5-0 losing sequence against him. But Murray found a couple of aces to level at 3-3 and they settled into several spirited exchanges. Yet, even as Murray's cake was being demolished at unseemly pace by obliging reporters, the nearby TV screen showed Nadal in the early stages of a third-round dog-fight with Mikhail Youzhny, down a set and 0-2 and looking distinctly out of sorts, much as he had done before being gifted the Madrid title on Sunday, when Kei Nishikori retired injured.
Sharapova's concerns seemed to be justified with some uneven bounce and a heavy tumble by Melzer, who took an inordinately long time to wash the clay from his hands in mid-game. Murray, though, insisted he was keen for a Nadal victory (he had no cause to worry: the Spaniard found his rhythm and won 12 of the last 13 games to destroy the Russian 6-7, 6-2, 6-1). "It would not be a bad thing for me to play against Nadal," he said, "because I haven't played him for three years. I haven't practised with him hardly at all either. I used to practise with him quite a lot. So I would actually be quite interested to play against him before the French Open and Wimbledon, to see how his game has changed and also the things I can do to make it difficult for him.
The match was closer than the scores suggest, and Murray had to fight through six deuce points to hold in the ninth game, which took 15 minutes – half as long as the entire match to that point. "I'm sure there will be things also that won't work against him, that I'll need to change. So, better to play him now rather than in the French or at Wimbledon."
In sight of the set, Murray clicked up a gear, although Melzer, still moving well at 32, did his best to stay with him. The rally of the match arrived in a blizzard of close-quarter touch-tennis in the tie-break, Murray finishing it with a deft backhand volley for 6-0, and closed it out comfortably. So, their 19th meeting in seven years on Tour rekindles a rivalry forged as teenagers in Spain, where their story began, the Mallorcan and the Scot, close enough to be regular hitting partners then fierce adversaries when the draw threw them together 15 times between 2008 and 2011, including a run of 10 events in a row when they were on the same side of the draw. Nadal leads 13-5.
He broke at the start of the second but had a blip in the sixth game, handing Melzer two break points with some inattentive tennis and was left stranded on the baseline when a sizzling return clipped the corner line for 3-3. As for Nadal's continued struggle, the world No 1 said after seeing off Youzhny: "Get used to it. With the years, everybody suffers. It is part of the sport, part of everybody's career. It is normal in tennis. I will not suffer that much if I am serving for the set, but it was difficult [in the wind] today. You don't want to be that long on court, like yesterday, but these things happen. It was tough. Conditions today were impossible.
Murray then won eight points in a row to break and hold for 5-3, and Melzer's head dropped. Serving for the match, Murray faltered before finishing with an ace. His serve was good in Madrid and better here. He will be pleased with his performance. "Tomorrow is going to be a very tough match. I am confident, but I have to do the right things to give myself a chance to win, play with more control, a little bit more speed. It's going to be hard, playing one of the best players in the world after two tough days. If I don't take my chances I am going to be spending the weekend in Mallorca."
The ageless Tommy Haas earlier brought Stanislas Wawrinka's tournament to a dramatic conclusion in two hours of absorbing tennis on Campo Centrale. In a contest of fluctuating fortunes in still, warm air, the German with the American accent aced the Australian Open champion for the seventh time to wrap up a 5-7, 6-2, 6-3 win that puts him through to the quarter-finals. Murray has always preferred the challenge of playing his peers, especially Nadal and Roger Federer rather than those below him in the rankings. For one, it keeps him sharp – and it also removes the "banana skin" factor that can disturb a sometimes delicate mind-set.
Following the departure of Roger Federer at the first time of asking on Wednesday, the Swiss contingent has been obliterated and expectations for Roland Garros recalculated. Wawrinka, who went out before the quarters in Indian Wells and in his first match in Madrid last week, but beat Federer to win in Monte Carlo to go with his January victory in Chennai, needs a run of consistency to lift himself for the French Open, which starts on Sunday. He faded disappointingly here against the 15th seed, who has now won both their matches. "Obviously you want to be playing against the best players. If you are, it means you're in the latter stage of the tournament, and that's where you want to be. I played against most of them close to 20 times [each], so it's just a bit strange not to have played the best player in the world just now for such a long period of time. We used to always get drawn in the same side of the draw as well. It was ridiculous."
In the bottom half of the draw, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who has had an indifferent season, was denied his 300th Tour win when eighth seed Milos Raonic beat him 7-6, 6-4. The Frenchman has lost 10 times this year and will probably not go to his home tournament bubbling with enthusiasm. Murray said he has noticed minute changes in Nadal's game, although he wisely kept the public analysis to a minimum. "I think the thing is the confidence. For example, his forehand looks similar to me but he was returning pretty short this week; when he is confident he tends to return a lot deeper. He has made some changes to his backhand during his career, so that might be the shot that breaks down a little more and you lose confidence in it – but I don't see major changes in his game. Maybe he didn't play his best tennis in parts of Rome and Monte Carlo, but he looked pretty damn good last week."
Raonic plays Federer's conqueror, Jeremy Chardy, who was way too sharp for the Croatian Ivan Dodig, winning 6-3, 6-2. As we hoovered up the last crumbs of his cake, Murray reflected on the demands of his calling, and he remains refreshingly upbeat, not at all ground down by the routine or the physical sacrifices, of which there are many. "To be honest, it's not that tough. The only thing that is hard is spending a lot of time away from family. The rest of it? Great hotels, we go to the best cities in the world and the one thing tennis has given me is the opportunity to see the whole world, which I might not have been doing at my age if it wasn't for tennis.
"You do need to work very hard to stay at the top and you need a willingness to learn and keep improving. Guys get better and if you only want to put in an hour-and-a-half on the court a day and not do any of the physical work and just go through the motions, that's when it gets close to the end."