Palatinate Sport: Summer Tennis Despair

Originally published in Palatinate Sport, Issue 720 (October 5th 2010).

October. It’s a depressing month. It’s cold and damp, but more importantly, even leaves would rather jump to their deaths from the trees than look back on a summer of disappointing British tennis.

We’ve had Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open, and Andy Murray, the sole British player in the world rankings, has won none of them. He has lost in a fourth round, semi-final and third round respectively this year, despite reaching the final of the Australian Open in January. Hardly Mr Consistency- his sole title of the year may have come from an impressive display at the Toronto Masters in August, but he failed to convert this into success on other hard courts, losing in the quarter-finals of Cincinnati and then embarrassingly early at the US Open.

While it’s fair to say that Murray underperforms in tour tournaments, perhaps his slam record is less surprising. Roland Garros and the US saw early defeats, but against Thomas Berdych and Stanislas Wawrinka respectively- both are formidable players whose rankings (17 and 27) do not reflect the form they can sometimes produce. Wawrinka in particular played one of the best matches of his career. Considering Rafael Nadal’s performance at Wimbledon, it’s hardly shocking that he could beat Murray in a semi.

But it’s not just the competition to blame. Murray’s form can drop at key moments and he can look lethargic on court. He lacked some of the flair during the Wawrinka match that we saw from him in Sydney and Toronto, and grumbled and moaned as he lost to Berdych. John Lloyd, Britain’s Davis Cup coach and former British number one, has recently gone on record saying that he believes Murray will need to change his psychological approach if he is to win the majors of which he is capable. It certainly appears that, for all the epic five-setters we’ve seen him come through, he can give up in the face of defeat, sealing his own fate; in a game which demands as much mental stamina as tennis, that’s hardly helpful.

He’s far from a hopeless case. He is ranked 4 in the world, still only 23 years old, in impressive physical shape and facing the prospect of a new coach to help him reassess his game. He has 15 tour singles titles and has been in two grand slam finals. That said, Murray still has far to go before he reaches the dizzying heights that Brits dream of- and if he wants to become world number one, chances are he’ll have to go through Roger Federer, Nadal and even Novak Djokovic first. He’s beaten all of them at least once, and Federer’s grip on supremacy has loosened of late, but their dominance as the top three in the men’s game since the Dark Ages will not be broken easily.

Still, there’s another question to raise here. Britain only seems to produce one good player at a time. The British men’s number two is Alex Bogdanovic, sitting pretty at the time of writing at number 220 in the world. Why is Murray our only hope?

The answer would appear to be in his background. Like Tim Henman before him, he comes from a sporting family; though Henman’s upbringing was considerably more privileged, Murray’s parents could send him away to train in Barcelona at the age of 15. Tennis still seems to be the reserve of the wealthy in Britain, largely because of vast under-investment over the years. The vast majority of investment in British sport goes either on more mainstream sports (football, rugby, even cricket) or potential Olympic hopefuls, while not enough is being done to find and develop young talent. While this has begun to improve (Britain boasts some promising juniors such as Laura Robson), the crucial stage lies in transferring junior successes into future adult champions. Time will tell whether we can get this right. Until we do, no amount of strawberries and cream can change the fact that Britain deserves all the yearly disappointment it gets.