Andy Murray – Zen and the art of racquet maintenance

In Tuesday night’s quarter final Nick Kyrgios broke another racquet. Not the first and unlikely to be the last in his career. Whether it be a sign of youthful exuberance (he is still a teenager after all) or some deeper level of bratitude only time will tell. We seem willing to cut this kid some slack from our usual harsh assessment of Australian players’ character. Possibly because he appears to be the real deal.

As a player Kyrgios has some real weapons, limited technical flaws and does not choke in the big moments. Contrast this with the arrival of Lleyton Hewitt almost 20 years ago; he never had so easy a ride. A similar youthful fire, but built off a platform of cap backwards American “c’mon”s and Wilanderesque hand gestures. He was altogether too foreign and unlikable when we had Pat Rafter.

Pat on the back

Our Pat who was the perennial pleasant chap (I met him a few times working at the Australian Men’s Hardcourts in Adelaide – he really is that polite) who would even win the “nice guy” category at the ATP awards each year. He was a major winner and was a contender everywhere except Roland Garros (which is why Richard Fromberg was invented).

So it’s not surprising we loved Pat and placed Lleyton somewhere on a scale of tolerance to contempt (it didn’t help that, post break-up, Belgium turned down our offer to trade him for Kim Clijsters). We even made Pat “Australian of the Year” despite him being a resident of Bermuda at the time – legally avoiding paying tax in the country that saw fit to bestow him with its highest honour (outside winner of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, anyway).

Lleyton, the world’s most prolific Davis Cup player, has always loved Australia in a way that it never saw fit to love him back.

The mind/body split

But even with his racquet abuse, crowd engagement, interesting haircut and no BS attitude at press conferences, Kyrgios was not the most compelling player on the court in the quarter final for mine. Andy Murray is the full package.

As a kid learning the craft of tennis I would often hear the statement that tennis is 90% mental and 10% physical. While I understood the concept, that saying never rang true for me. I could look at the matches around me and mostly the outcome could be easily explained through fitness or technique. Occasionally a wily older player would talk a fitter, more proficient player out of a match but this was the exception.

The one rider I would attach is the way the elder statesman used to work over younger players on the court. As a Division 1/2 level player in Adelaide in his 40s, dad would always be well turned out in his white tennis gear (one of his favourite saying is ‘if you can’t play like a professional, at least look like one’), a terry towelling hat, some grey facial hair and a bald head. Add to that a classical Australian playing style – Newk like serve and volley action, slice backhand and flat forehand.

To the young tyros on the tennis courts of the Woodville Association in the late 80s / early 90s he seemed straight out of the Pleistocene. Many a time I saw a young player’s technical failings enhanced and then overwhelmed by the indignity of getting their backsides handed to them by ‘that old bloke’.

Big 4 – more than just caravan parks

But for me, even at the professional level, I think most of the results are explicable through issues of technique and physicality. That is until you get to the Big 4 of men’s tennis: Federer; Nadal; Djokovic; and Murray. They are technically and physically pretty much on a par, so it is only the mental that will separate them on any given day. Federer, probably the most naturally gifted player of the modern age, has seen his Greatest of All Time claims lessened by wilting in the big moments before the unwavering resolve of Nadal and Djokovic.

Back to Murray – injuries aside, he is currently technically and physically the strongest of the four. Mentally he can be all over the shop. As a result, a meeting between Murray and any of the other Big 4 is fascinating viewing. He has played a combined seven major finals against Djokovic and Federer, winning two. Add to that a five set loss to each of them in the semi final of the Australian Open. He has never played a major final against Nadal but has played him 9 times in majors, 8 of those a quarter or a semi – Nadal leads 7-2.

So over his major career Murray has played the other three at least 18 times and won only four. Reasonable evidence of their mental hold over him and why he is a joy to watch. Each match you know you’ll get a mental brick wall from Djokovic or Nadal and Federer will majestically cruise the court. At the other end you have a gimping, shouting at his mum, injury prone whirligig. Each moment on court is filled with possibility and unpredictability – surely what we should be looking for once the Australians are back in their natural habitat of the commentary box.

A Scot knows what to do with a Czech

Although it was against Berdych, Thursday night’s semi had Murray getting out his full bag of tricks. Death stares, calf twinges, arguments with the umpire, shouting and rambling. Add to that a fiancé with a sailor’s vocabulary – who would want to watch anybody else? That said, Murray played Berdych. With all of the antipathy between the coaching boxes leading to on court daggers and under the breathe comments, Murray was able to put Berdych off his game while focussing his own energy in his favoured ‘it’s me against the world’ style.

Perhaps he is developing, like Djokovic the tennis Jedi, the ability to better use his own mental energy to control the rhythm of the game – we saw Novak do that perfectly in his semi against Wawrinka. As long as we regularly get the full Murray show, as we should tonight, I will keep watching tennis. As the only meeting of the Big 4 at this Australian Open, let’s hope tonight is a cracker.