”I sound like a woman,” said Andy Murray, smiling.
It was a few hours after yet another dramatic five-set Grand Slam victory, this time over Austria’s Jürgen Melzer in the third round of the US Open. In a small room beneath the Arthur Ashe stadium, the Scot relaxed and talked about a small spending spree that had yielded jackets, T-shirts and trousers in a ”nice little clothes shop” in Manhattan.
This was the gentle, often self-deprecatory young man who is rarely publicly on view. The Americans are trying very hard to like Murray. After all, he frequently speaks openly and enthusiastically about his deep-rooted passion for this tournament, where he was junior champion in 2004, but they would love him to show his teeth a little more when on court — and not in the form of a snarl.
It may, ultimately, happen. For the time being, Murray remains miserly when it comes to open displays of undiluted happiness. It is his nature to a large degree, at least in public; such are the ambitions and high goals he has set himself that he sees no great cause to become overly effusive just yet.
As he has reached his first Grand Slam semifinal, beating Argentina’s Juan Martin Del Potro 7-6 7-6 4-6 7-5 in the US Open quarterfinals, he may allow himself a little leeway, a few more glimpses of his delight. Murray is aiming for the very top and believes it could occur under the floodlights on Sunday.
”Your career is defined by the big matches,” Murray said after he came from two sets down to beat the left-handed Melzer, just as he had done at Wimbledon against Richard Gasquet of France.
To date these ”big matches” have, at Grand Slam level, largely been ones of redemption, of Murray coming back from the brink.
Scratch the surface and Murray remains prickly about the criticism levelled at him in the early part of his career. ”It was unfair,” he said. ”It all came upon me very quickly in the Slams and I was still growing.”
He emphasised the damage that might have been done if he had pushed himself too hard as a teenager. Now he takes understandable pride in his level of fitness, the constant gym work and — ”hardest of all” — the repetitive track work when he runs a series of gruelling 100m and 400m shuttles within a set time. –