The only losses came against Djokovic in the quarterfinals past year, and against Robin Soderling in the fourth round in 2009. On his way there, Murray is projected to face Japan’s Kei Nishikori in the French Open semifinal.
Advertisement
“It was part of my job and the Djokovic team to lift him up, touch his spirits and his inner soul, for him to understand this was a tough loss but the only way out is up”.
Halep put herself firmly in the frame by winning the title in Madrid after an indifferent start to the year but then lost her opening match in Rome.
And if there is ever a good time to play the world No?1, this might be it. Djokovic has so much riding on this tournament – the only grand slam he has yet to capture – that he would hardly be human if he did not feel a little extra tension in his racket arm.
Murray, who is one of the favourites to win the Roland Garros title, sympathises with Federer having suffered back injuries of his own in the past when he missed the 2012 French Open.
He has won 11 majors and could yet equal Nadal’s haul of 14 by the end of the year. Stefan Edberg also made 13 fruitless visits while Becker tried nine times.
John McEnroe also flopped, the four-time US Open and three-time Wimbledon victor having to console himself with a runner-up spot in Paris in 1984.
He’s already come quite close to adding the Coupe des Mousquetaires to his trophy collection, finishing as the runner-up in three of the past four years. He starts in Paris against Taiwan’s Lu Yen-Hsun, the world No100.
Djokovic has beaten him seven consecutive times since that 2014 final – crushing him in three sets in the quarterfinals here a year ago and beating him twice more on clay, most recently in the quarterfinals of the Italian Open.
The 29-year-old Spaniard describes Roland Garros as the most important place of his career – how could he not? – and he said: “It’s true that I had a lot of success here and it’s true that I like the tournament”. “I don’t try to approach them from a view of being obsessed with this tournament”.
World No. 2 Murray is shaping up as Djokovic’s greatest threat. I think it’s just pretty awesome, but it means he cares about his future and the Olympics this year and Wimbledon and US Open.
The first goal is to reach the final; the real goal is to win.
Just as alarmingly, Nadal no longer threw off that trademark feeling that he was going to hang on in a match until he won it, no matter how large a deficit he was facing, no matter how long he had to stay on the court. Murray plays his best tennis now by far on red clay. Given how Nadal has always been an open book emotionally, if we believed him when he has said there were times in the past year when he felt he was literally suffering on-court anxiety attacks, then we should probably believe him when he suggests he is finally pulling out of it.
CHEATING: A report about whether tennis was doing enough to investigate possible corruption stirred things up at the start of the Australian Open in January.
Austrian Dominic Thiem, who knocked Federer out in Rome, is lying in wait in the round of 16.
“No, I’m not feeling old”.
“I reduced the number of weeks that I could be present since the Australian Open and. effectively, we’ve spent little time together”, said Mauresmo, who won Wimbledon and the Australian Open.
“It’s easy to say: hit the second serve harder, but you need to have the technique to be able to do that”, Murray said.
Advertisement
Defending champion Stan Wawrinka and Andy Murray could meet in the other semifinal match.
