Andy Murray takes positives from Battle of the Brits despite semi-final defeat to Dan Evans
Andy Murray couldn’t quite squeeze past Dan Evans and into Sunday’s final of the Schroders Battle of the Brits, but he still had more pop in his racket on Saturday than at any time since his hip blew up in the summer of 2017.
There are no spectators at the National Tennis Centre, no rankings points and only modest prizemoney. And yet, Jamie Murray’s exhibition event has been a triumph, using the intense rivalry between these players as fuel.
Saturday was no exception. You would have to go back to the era of wooden rackets for the last time the United Kingdom boasted four men of the quality of yesterday’s semi-finalists, while the doubles final - which saw Jamie Murray and his partner Neal Skupski overcome Evans and Lloyd Glasspool - offered its own excitement. But Andy Murray’s meeting with Evans was the pick of the day. It is hard to remember an all-British contest of such sustained quality.
Murray opened with what his coach Jamie Delgado called “the best set of tennis I’ve seen him play in a long time” before fading to a 1-6, 6-3, 10-8 defeat.
“At the start it was pretty flawless from Andy,” chimed Evans afterwards. “He overpowered me, came forward, served really well. The serve is the main thing that has got back to normal since the hip. He can work on the other parts of his game. But if he can do that [serve well] for long periods of time, he’s only going in one direction.”
The speed gun measured Murray’s average first-serve speed at 124mph – up from 117mph during the round-robin phase of this event – while one missile reached 134mph. He looked highly motivated from the first game, which featured two aces and one backhand winner, and when Amazon Prime’s commentator Sam Smith asked him about his positive start in a mid-match interview, we found out why. He was cheesed off about some of the stick he had taken on the players’ WhatsApp group during the week, especially with regard to Wednesday night’s narrow defeat against Kyle Edmund.
“The guys have been saying that I’m not playing aggressive,” said Murray, with a face like thunder. “I like to play very far behind the baseline and just hack, apparently.”
Later, during a post-match video conference, he expanded on the same point. “The guys have been chatting a lot. I know how to win matches at the highest level. I don’t think I need to be lectured by some of the guys. I adapt my style. Kyle is a big guy and a big hitter. Dan plays with more flair. Playing at the highest level, you have to be able to adapt.”
If Murray’s serve was super-speedy, his movement around the court was also sharp. And that is an even bigger deal, after three miserable years in which he has only managed to notch up a combined total of 30 competitive matches. “This week was a big step up and I coped physically relatively well,” he said. “I moved better each match, felt more confident and comfortable. It was a positive week.
“Providing I don’t have any setbacks, I will be in a much better place,” Murray added, with regard to his planned entry to the first ATP event of the post-lockdown period in Washington on August 14. “I did pretty well but I was tired. It shows in my performance level. It’s up and down just now, not being able to sustain my intensity for long enough.”
That was certainly the case on Saturday. In the first set, Murray played the sort of route-one tennis that his former coach Ivan Lendl always demanded from him, relying on big serves and heavy forehands rather than his renowned counter-punching skills. Had he kept going down the same road, he would have reached Sunday's final for sure. But then Evans began to lift his own level, darting forward on dozens of cheeky net-raids, while Murray’s own dynamism fell away.
Evans needed a freakish piece of luck on match point to close out his win, when his wayward backhand drive flicked the net and was redirected back into the court for the most unorthodox of winners. But he had earned that reprieve with his aggressive intent. Earlier in that super tie-break, he had flicked out his racket at Murray’s rasping backhand return – which also touched the net-cord on its way over – and produced a half-volley for the ages.
Still, both men are expected to be back on Sunday, as there is a third-fourth play-off scheduled for 1pm as an appetiser for the final. Assuming that Murray feels that he has an another match left in him, he will face the awkward left-hander Cameron Norrie after Norrie came up short on Saturday by an almost identical margin: 6-7, 6-4, 10-8.
As for the final, Edmund has won both his previous meetings with Evan. Both men have spent the lockdown period productively, working hard on their fitness levels, and that investment has proved valuable in the sweltering conditions prevailing at the NTC over the last few days.
So far, Edmund has shown the most powerful arsenal of anyone in the field, firing thunderbolts off both wings – which has not always been the case. His improved backhand drive came to the rescue in Saturday’s super tie-break when he clinched the win with successive winners – the first cross-court and the second up the line.
As Edmund held up a fist in his understated way, Norrie was left flat on his back, having been comprehensively wrong-footed by the final stroke of the match. His tumble looked alarming, but fortunately he managed to get away without tweaking an ankle.
