Andy murray australian open 2023 professional#
That is, in professional sport terms, long enough to recharge the batteries but perhaps not when your last match ended at 4.05am and basically denied you an entire night’s sleep. Murray has had just 28 hours recovery between beating Kokkinakis and his meeting with Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut this morning. When it comes to excitement, Andy Murray has set the bar fairly high at the Australian Open thus far.īack-to-back five set wins against talented opponents, the second of which – against local favourite Thanassi Kokkinakis – will surely go down as one of the best matches the Briton has ever played.
He also maintained a blank exterior while Murray was now emoting in all directions, manifesting defiance one moment and frustration the next. He deployed the drop-shot with almost sadistic brilliance, and soaked up the power that Murray threw at him. He often likes to focus on a single fan when he is looking for energy, and this fan stood up and roared right back at him in encouragement.īautista Agut had been rattled by Murray’s comeback, but to his credit he refocused and settled back into his relentless rhythm. As the match progressed, he fixed his attention on a woman wearing a yellow dress, who was sitting in the front row. He had abandoned his impassive manner and was fist-pumping at every opportunity, especially towards the fans carrying Saltire flags. Murray was now using the partisan crowd on Margaret Court Arena in his favour. From a break down in the second set, he somehow earned a tie-break, then saved two set points before levelling when Bautista Agut netted a forehand. He began to throw himself into his shots, looking to score some quick kills. But we underestimated Murray’s monstrous mongrel. When Bautista Agut ripped through that first set in 29 minutes, dropping only a single game, we feared this could be a rout. Neither did he show any emotion, apparently lost in despair at his own creaking bones. Both were completely absent in a first set in which he couldn’t get his feet going at all. Murray’s game is usually based on explosive movement and particularly on his return. I gave everything that I had the last three matches. "I feel like I gave everything that I had to this event. That was really the main thing that I was struggling with today. I had to come in in the morning to give that time to settle. I had about seven or eight blisters that I had to have drained and then he put this liquid in to dry it. Murray said: "I mean, I slept from 6 until 9 the morning I played the match with Kokkinakis, which obviously isn't enough. When he was forced to sprint from side to side, he lurched so alarmingly that you feared one of the cogs might fall out of his metal hip. But for all Murray’s ability to soak up suffering, there were still limits to what a body in this condition could achieve. If he had been able to move his body as smoothly as he shaped his groundstrokes, Bautista Agut would have been in serious trouble.
His surges came in waves, but when he was feeling the power, he struck the ball with real venom. But that’s what Murray did, even snatching the second set against the run of play. It seems unthinkable that a man in his condition could strike 49 winners against an opponent who moves as well as Bautista Agut. After the longer rallies, he would double over in exhaustion – and then pull at the tongue of his left shoe as if to pretend that he was actually just adjusting his laces.Īnd yet, when the ball was in play, he kept finding new, untapped reserves of energy, like an oil company drilling ever deeper beneath the sea-bed. Between points, he was limping like a man who had just crossed the Outback on a camel. Yet he grimaced and grunted his way through another 3hr 29min of hand-to-hand combat, extending Bautista Agut to four sets before finally going down 6-1, 6-7, 6-3, 6-4.įor Murrayphiles, this was another heroic effort, but not an easy watch. He had only had 39 hours’ recovery time since the longest match of his career, which finished at 4.05am on Friday. After a back-breaking workload of 14hr 3min over the first three rounds of this Australian Open, Murray finally bowed out – but not before another extraordinary display of guts.ĭrawn against Roberto Bautista Agut – tennis’s Mr Consistency – Murray was clearly in agony from the first point to the last.
By Simon Briggs, Tennis Correspondent, in MelbourneĮven Andy Murray doesn’t have unlimited miracles at his disposal.
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