New coach Ivan Lendl will have his job cut out to improve Andy Murray’s mental toughness after watching him butcher his Australian Open semi final against Novak Djokovic at Melbourne Park last night.
Djokovic, the undisputed world number one and defending champion won 6-3 3-6 6-7 6-1 7-5 in a tick under five nail-biting hours.
Lendl looked totally bewildered watching Murray go from serving strongly supported by exhilarating strokeplay to serving double faults and playing plain dumb tennis.
The extremities. Lendl was never like that capturing eight Slam singles titles during his stellar career.
Lendl was world number one when Murray and Djokovic were born a week apart in 1987 – Murray the eldest.
The difference now is Djokovic survives on mental toughness, Murray implodes without it.
How could Murray lead two sets to one, and turn off in the fourth set to be flogged 6-1 in just 25 minutes, looking like a weekend amateur?
It doesn’t make any sense. Murray was in command, but soon wasn’t as Djokovic sniffed victory from left field.
The match stats don’t make any sense either:
Aces – Djokovic 11-9.
Double faults – Murray 10-9.
Unforced errors – Murray 86-69.
Winners – Djokovic 49-47.
Break point conversions – Djokovic 11 of 26 (42%), Murray 7 of 24 (29%).
Total points won – Djokovic 184-161.
I lost count of the number of times Murray led 0-30 on the Djokovic serve, only to lose the game by dumping regulation returns into the bottom half of the net. Dumb tennis, not concentrating on the job at hand that accounted for most of Murray’s horrific unforced error count of 86.
It was interesting watching the reaction of Australia’s tennis royalty to this extraordinary semi final.
With 51 Slam singles between them Margaret Court (24), Rod Laver (11), Ken Rosewall (8), Frank Sedgman (5), and Neale Fraser (3) looked stunned.
As was the full house with 155 unforced errors between Djokovic and Murray.
Sure there were many fantastic rallies of between 30 and 42 shots at full bore, using all the court. Then there were the unforced errors that brought gasps of disbelief.
Djokovic will need to lift his consistency in Sunday’s final against Nadal, even though the Serb has won their last six meetings.
Both singles finals have unusual and unwanted features.
Today’s ladies final between Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka brings together the sport’s most piercing screamers with every shot.
The men’s final between Djokovic and Nadal the two worst offenders at time-wasting – Djokovic with his 12-20 bounces before serving, Nadal with his fidgeting and fiddling with his clothing, and ball-bouncing, before he serves.
It’s high time the screaming and the time-wasting were dealt with heavy penalties.
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