ANDY Murray would have been as surprised as anyone to see Rafa Nadal lose to Gilles Muller. These guys are human, it is not like they are robots. Although you shouldn’t underestimate the respect players have for Muller, particularly on a grass court. And they would have looked at Rafa’s recent poor record here, and known there was something in that as well. Even if he has achieved greatness on clay again this year.
I would imagine in someone’s early days seeing a main rival exit the competition like that could throw you off. Now Andy just chews over it, opens up a bag with his notes on it, and gets back on it pretty quickly. There is no doubt there is an awareness of it but Andy is far too experienced to let it affect him. Anyone who gets to the quarter final of Wimbledon is obviously playing damn good tennis. But you would back Andy against all the players in his top half, certainly now Nadal has exited. So of course he will be pleased with how the draw is looking. Sam Querrey has played great to get here, but this is Andy Murray, on grass. You have to say that he has got the edge.
Okay I didn’t pick the result of the Rafa-Muller match, but then I didn’t hear anybody do that. But I did say that he was always going to be dangerous because he is made to play on grass with very good variety on the serve. Rafa didn’t play so well in the first couple of sets - maybe it was banging his head in the warm up at the start, that looked sore - but he can look at himself in the mirror and say in the press conference like he always does that I fought extremely well. Other years where Rafa lost here his knees were bad and people were saying there was no way he was coming back from here. But people should put it into context and rewind a few months to when Rafa was amazing on the clay or Australia.
If you are in the quarter finals, that means you have got a shot, but it is not easy to beat Murray and then say a Federer or Djokovic. Cilic has done it at the US Open so he knows how to do it and is dangerous. But there is no point really looking ahead until the matches are there. What you do know is that you have two really good grass court players sitting there waiting for the winner of Murray-Querrey in Cilic and Muller.
Murray has a good head to head record against Querrey - 7:1 in his favour - but he will be really mindful of what Querrey did to Djokovic when he was in a really good place as holder of all four Grand Slams. But you have seen it before when it comes to Andy against the big servers, how good he gets as the match goes on at choosing where they are serving at certain points and situations. There will clearly be some service games that Querrey holds well, but as the match goes on Andy will make so many balls and start to apply that pressure. He will want to keep a high percentage of first serves in too. Because while Querrey isn’t the best returner of first serves, he is really dangerous when he takes a big swing on the second. I don’t think the backhand is as much of a weakness as people say. There might be a tie break here or there but I think Andy has got the game. These head-to-heads don’t lie.
Milos Raonic is the first big test for Federer. His win against Alex Zverev was huge, against a player who felt this was his big chance to make it in the slams. When Raonic serves big, a bit like Cilic, and their game is on, it can be a problem because they get tie-breaks then smash a couple of big forehands. Berdych hasn’t had a great year so I give Djokovic the advantage in that one.
As for Jo Konta, reaching the semis is a massive achievement but she doesn’t need to stop there. She is growing as a player all the time. I was fortunate to spend time with her in Rio and she is on an upward curve. She is professional, shows desire, is willing to keep learning. Whether it happens here or not she has years and years of other chances to win slams ahead of her.
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