Counterpuncher Murray turns into the aggressor in win over Federer

Counterpunching tennis has never been considered a connoisseur’s delight. Where’s the beauty in a player running endlessly and making innumerable painstaking gets? No; aggressive, first-strike tennis has always been held up as the ideal that every player must aspire to – nothing, we have been led to believe, can be as mesmerizing as watching an exquisitely angled volley roll away for a winner. But for the better part of the men’s semifinal at the Australian Open today, Andy Murray showed that counterpunching tennis, when combined with a dash of daredevilry and a pinch of panache, can be just as mesmerizing as any other brand of tennis. So mesmerizing, in fact, that even the great Roger Federer is left clueless.

Murray entered the semifinal carrying a lopsided 0-3 record against the Swiss in Majors, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that from the way Murray started the match. He really did seem to have come racing out of the blocks, as he sprinted all over the court to get a break point in the very first game, which Federer managed to evade. Murray wasn’t about to let up his in efforts to put pressure on the Federer serve though. Returning everything that Federer threw at him, and taking the initiative when given the slightest opportunity, Murray broke early for a 2-1 lead. The lead proved decisive; Federer had a break point in the very next game, but the Scot’s serve bailed him out. That serve would ultimately prove to be the difference in the match, as Murray never fell behind in the match, ultimately pulling it out in five sets. As sacrilegious as this may sound, Murray’s first serve was substantially quicker and more effective than Federer’s throughout.

Or was it the return, rather than the serve, that was the game-changer? Murray’s second serve has never been anywhere near as incisive as Federer’s, and it certainly wasn’t today. At some points Murray got so tentative with his second delivery that Federer had enough time to make a premeditated move to run around his backhand, get tied into the completely wrong position, and still hit a power-packed return.

And yet, Murray won 63% of his second serve points, while Federer won only 42% of his.

How did that happen? It happened because of the difference in the urgency of the return that the two players showed. Federer did hit some blazing returns, but he also sliced a lot of them softly (a tactic really useful against tall big-hitters, but not so much against brilliant movers) and hit several of them into the net, or out. Murray, on the other hand, was unrelenting with his return. The precision, variety and intelligence with which he hit the shot today – he hardly ever went for outright winners, but kept putting the ball back in uncomfortable positions for Federer – made sure that the Swiss was on the backfoot whenever he missed a first serve.

The first shot – the serve, or the return – was just one part of the battle though. In the neutral baseline rallies, Murray used his greater consistency to stay in the points longer than his opponent. Hitting his crosscourt forehand with purpose and power, and repeatedly targeting Federer’s backhand with his solid two-hander, Murray kept outmaneuvering Federer in the longer rallies. That’s what we’ve come to expect in ever Federer-Murray match though – nothing new there. What was new was the way Murray managed to not just stay in the rallies long enough to frustrate Federer, but also use his movement and court sense to turn the tables on his opponent and end the points with his own winners rather than Federer’s errors.

By the end of the first set, Murray had nearly tripled the winner count of Federer – 16 to 6 (he ended the match with 62 winners to Federer’s 43) – and it wasn’t difficult to see why. Once a rally went beyond 4 or 5 shots, Murray seemed to be putting up an exhibition of the aesthetic side of his game. He didn’t just retrieve Federer’s potential winners and put them back across the net; he used angles and spins to tease the ball out of Federer’s comfort zone, forcing the Swiss to back off and hit a short ball, which was then duly punished.  Federer made a bucketload of errors, yes (60 for the match), but you knew that many of them, if not most, emerged out of his fear of giving Murray too much to work with. Murray was still the counterpuncher, but he was the counterpuncher who intimidated his opponent in a way that no offensive player can ever do.

For Federer, this wasn’t an entirely unexpected result. He looked less than convincing in his quarterfinal against Tsonga, and with his serve not working as well as it usually does, it was always going to be an uphill struggle against Murray. Once the match went to five sets, the result was hardly in doubt. Federer looked decidedly tired in the decider, and his with his feet not moving, it was almost inevitable that he would commit a rash of errors trying to keep the points short. And make a rash of errors he did, allowing Murray to canter to a 6-2 victory in the 5th set. Still, the fact that he took the match to five sets at all has to be seen as a bit of a victory for him. He was thoroughly outplayed by Murray for vast stretches of the match – I remember thinking of his 2nd set victory as daylight robbery – and at several stages he seemed to have run out of ideas to counter Murray’s brilliant play. And despite all of that, he managed to eke out two sets with nothing more than two short patches of dazzling shot-making. He continues to be the master of the tie-breaker, and the way in which he fought back in the fourth set after Murray served for it at 6-5 was a sight to behold.

Not as much of a sight to behold, though, as Murray’s mesmerizing play throughout the match. There remain a couple of worries; his second serve continues to be too much of a gimme in pressure situations, and his nervousness when serving for the match in the 4th set brought back memories of his choke-jobs from the past. But overall, Murray can’t possibly be anything but elated with his level going into the final. There is a fine line between between playing aggressively and playing too aggressively, as Federer suggested before the match, and Murray made sure that he achieved the perfect balance today. He played aggressively, but with enough margin for error, and only when he was in the right position for it. And he kept putting himself in position to be aggressive, no matter how hard Federer tried to take the attack to him. There is a sublime beauty to the way that the Scot can turn defense into offense, and while that may not be easy to spot all the time, it’s worth taking the trouble to look for it.

Murray may still be a counterpuncher, but the way he has been going the last few months, he might just rack up enough memorable victories to turn counterpunching tennis into a connoisseur’s delight.