As Andy Murray prepared to try and save match point beneath the chilly November lighting in the AccorHotel Arena on Monday night, you had a feeling, didn’t you?
You know the one.
It crept up on you, bit by oh-so-this-is-how-it’s-going-to-be bit, goose-bumping across your skin like bristled needles with shocking freeze, landing hard and fast within your head in the shape of an aircraft carrier filled with the inevitable.
You knew.
Murray’s opportunities to finish the match had come and gone, shown the exit door by a combination of Dominik Koepfer’s clutch-driven play and an array of the Scot’s errors that screamed nervy tiredness in their very occurrence.
Seven Murray curtain-closers had already been played, domino-ing steadily, one after another, clackity-clacking as they fell steadily from existence into the back pocket of his opponent.
With each passing point, the finish line looked desperate, ready to reel in and envelope Murray at multiple moments, only restraining itself as Koepfer clawed his way out of hole after hole with cat-like slipperiness.
And when the deciding forehand mistake sailed high into the reaches of chequered flag finality, landing well-beyond the Koepfer baseline, it was paired with a devastated embrace of whispered words that said “how the fuck did he lose that?!” from the Murray fans among the watching.
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Trying to spin this defeat from its current position lodged in heartbreak territory is going to take some effort from Team Murray but they’ll certainly try.
They’ll look to the fact that it was a minor miracle that their man even found himself in place to win the match at all, so far he clearly was from the level of tennis that he’s demonstrated himself still capable of sporadically over the last few months.
Indeed, Koepfer probably should have won in straight sets as the the German had found himself serving for it late in the second, having won the first by exploiting numerous poor Murray service games.
But Murray is Murray and Koepfer is a lucky loser that found himself surprisingly in this position as a replacement for Jenson Brooksy, the American having to withdraw from this first round encounter mere hours before it was due to start.
The result was Murray breaking back with his back against the wall, pushing the doors to the Last Chance Saloon ajar by way of the force of his competitive nature alone, his tennis still lacking but his heart still wanting.
He’d win the set with the French crowd lifting him. They’d been waiting for this, any sign of a fightback, ready in preparation at a moments notice to stand from their seats and scare the winter shadows that were casting down from the rafters above with a roar of wanting more.
Koepfer fluffing his lines while in the spotlight would have broken many others and it was to his credit that the German knuckled down, backpacking the disappointment of finding his opponent draw level and heading straight back to work in the third with the air of a man not to be sent wayward into the distant realms of memorable defeats without a fight.
We’ve grown accustomed to these sorts of matches from Murray over the course of his career, all the way through to his most recent events, these blurry and barely-defined contests, so lung-busting and leg-sapping they are, tournament-winning hopes killed by way of outrageously arduous first and second round missions.
The problem now is that he finds himself drawn into them every week, too slow to find a comfortable rhythm with which he can coast to victory, often searching mid-match for a thing he once had, now lost at sea in the brutally cold out-of-sorts depths of ugly injury comeback.
The killer instinct that Murray lorded over the tour back in his heyday is ghosted, see-through now to the extent that his opponents fancy their chances always, even when he’s playing at the high level that he can clearly still wizard his way into offering up on – at the very least – a semi-regular occasion.
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The third set went with serve, flourishes of rally-ball madness interspersed with double fault-itis making for viewing that dragged at eyeballs and sandpapered on souls depending on whereabouts your loyalties fell.
Make no mistake, Murray’s giant backlog of success was visible through the murkiness, glaring out at us all in classical style as he turned to the crowd and roared a winner struck low from his racket that had looked near impossible, crowbarring gold-encrusted images at the back of our minds forwards into our rose-tinted goggles, of Murray in his glory, of Murray back at his very best.
But in the midst of it all shined frustration unmatched that held his body frequently at angles of teeth-grating body-tensing gurgling annoyance that often threatened all-out derailment.
And then came those Murray match points, scattered across both the final games and the final tiebreak, all going begging wide of the mark or within the boundaries in the form of winners for Koepfer who seemed dialled in when down close to death.
Koepfer, playing with house money and zero expectations, having awoken that morning with no knowledge that this match would be taking place, aimed in when seemingly out cold and fired through the mess to victory.
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Murray left the court last night, head shaking and mouth talking, lips moving with phrases probably best left un-translated.
He’ll know that this week was a chance missed. To end 2021 at Masters level with a few solid wins would have earmarked a big follow-up season next year for him and kept his ranking pushing towards the Australian Open qualification that remains worryingly out of reach. With no guarantee of a wildcard into the main draw and having rather dried up his usages of them this year for there to be a realistic case for many more offers of them, qualifying draws are beckoning him inwards.
We’re past the point now where “it’s just good to see him back on court playing again!” is an acceptable phrase to wheel out as the dust settles on losses like this. Murray deserves better than our pitying patta-cake sickly-sweet gaze and he’d almost certainly scorn at such looks if he saw them for himself.
If anybody wants no excuses made for him, it’s Andy Murray. The least we can do is not continue to do so.
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Murray does have one final wildcard for this year and he confirmed in his post-match press-conference last night that he intends to play the Stockholm Open in the coming weeks before following it up with possible participation in some exhibition tournaments during the off-season.
These are small events, building blocks for him now to use to try and locate what he’s currently missing ahead of a 2022 season that carries a sense of now-or-never expectation with it.
A yawning slope threatens that could well take his feet out from under him but if anything fights off the slips that the icy cliffs of disaster offer, it’s shiny shrapnel-like diamond-hardened grit.
And Andy Murray is made of that stuff.
Writing Beyond The Baseline 