Andy Murray, winner of Olympic gold but still without a Grand Slam title, will get another chance after beating both the weather and Tomas Berdych Saturday afternoon.
Wind was an opponent to both players Sunday, gusting above 20 mph, and changing directions suddenly. Serves flew long or blew wide, lobs floated and sailed, drop shots hung up or died. Even tossing the ball for a serve became a challenge often needing several tries. Winning the match meant adapting to the wind, and initially Tomas Berdych did better.
Both players hit a lot of unforced errors in the first set as they learned which shots would and wouldn’t work, and most of the games went to deuce many times; having the serve wasn’t always an advantage.
The first set lasted an hour and seventeen minutes; Berdych won seven games to five.
The next two sets were radically different. Murray broke Berdych in the first game of Set Two and went on to a relatively easy 6–2 win in only 44 minutes. Murray seemed to have mastered the wind; he hit far fewer errors (12-4 in set two, 11-2 in set three) while Berdych seemed to be growing frustrated and losing concentration. Murray got an early break in the third set as well, and went on to win 6–1 in 39 minutes.
The fourth set looked to be more of the same, with Murray breaking Berdych early, but in the fourth game Berdych rallied; he seemed to compose himself, and also stopped playing tentatively. Instead, Berdych, a power player, started swinging away; if his shots weren’t effective anyway, why not?
The change worked; though the 26-year-old Czech couldn’t depend on his serve (and surely missed those free points,) he started scoring on his ground strokes. Murray, always good at defense, was pushed to his limit as Berdych broke back and took the match to a tie-breaker.
With both players moving well, adjusting to the wind, and hitting hard, the match came down to accuracy—in the fourth set Berdych hit 21 winners and 22 unforced errors. Murray hit only nine winners, but only three errors.
Murray will continue his quest Monday to win his first Grand Slam final and to become the first Briton to win a Grand Slam in 76 years, facing the winner of the delayed Djokovic-Ferrer match.
