THERE was no sign of any drama and, of course, there hasn’t been a proper queen in Paris since Marie Antoinette was beheaded more than two centuries ago.
Instead, a considerably more sprightly Andy Murray simply stuck to the tennis to set up another collision at Roland Garros with old foe Richard Gasquet. Clearly the healing powers of physiotherapist Andy Ireland, along with a few anti-inflammatory tablets, were sufficient to quell the pain in Murray’s back and allow him to regard Virginia Wade’s comments about his second-round performance in a more measured manner. Yet perhaps the best remedy for restoring confidence and calm was the emphatic nature of the fourth seed’s 6–3 6–4 6–4 third-round win over Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo.
Once again Murray was fortunate that his 24-year-old opponent was not the most accomplished of Grand Slam performers. Before this year the baseliner from Bogota had never won a match at the French Open in five previous visits, although that wasn’t always apparent as he tested the Scot in some early exchanges before finally bowing to superior force, movement and accuracy.
Gasquet, currently ranked 20th in the world and regarded as more of an underachiever at Roland Garros than Murray is at Wimbledon, will be a vastly different proposition. Admittedly, the occasionally sublime 25-year-old Frenchman took the spoils in the pair’s most recent meeting on the clay of Rome’s Foro Italico little more than a fortnight ago but in major confrontations, contested over the best of five sets, Murray has repeatedly underlined his superiority.
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Twice Gasquet has romped off to a two sets lead, only for a combination of his own brittle self-belief and Murray’s stubborn determination to overhaul him. First there was that memorable first night under the Wimbledon roof in 2008 and then came a repeat performance two years ago when the Scot also had to contend with the pain that occasionally comes from the split knee-cap with which he was born.
“We have had some unbelievable matches where I have gone two sets and at least a break of serve behind so I don’t want to do that again,” said Murray, who has now reached the second week of the French Open four years in a row and will be looking to extend his run of reaching at least the semi-finals of majors to six.
“I wouldn’t necessarily see myself as the favourite. Obviously Richard beat me a couple of weeks ago and he’s going to have the crowd behind him. It’s going to be a tough match but when I played him here last time, I hung in, fought really hard, and just managed to turn the match around. I did the same thing at Wimbledon and when he plays well, he’s a very, very tough guy to beat.”
What Murray stopped short of saying is that Gasquet has also established something of a reputation for himself as being a competitor who struggles to finish off the big encounters and feels more pressure than support from the passionate Parisian crowd. Gasquet appeared on the cover of national magazine at the age of nine and was hailed as a potential world beater — it is hardly surprising that he has long struggled to live up to his potential. But he is not the first to suffer in that way.
In addition, there is much speculation over Gasquet’s level of fitness. He enjoyed a relatively undemanding passage into the fourth round with a 6-7 6-3 6-0 6-0 match over the German veteran Tommy Haas, who started strongly but ended their match looking every one of his 34 years as the temperature hit 80F. A round earlier, things were considerably more demanding for the Frenchman, who was so fatigued that he was sick on court during the second set against Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov.
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Murray, as ardent a spectator of other matches as can be found in the men’s locker room, is acutely aware of Gasquet’s struggles. “I saw it,” he admitted. “It was after a long rally; Richard was throwing up and Dimitrov cramped. I said in the middle of the rally that I thought that point might decide the match and it pretty much did. Obviously I’ll try to extend the rallies as much as I can to wear him down again.”
The ruthless mentality of coach Ivan Lendl is clearly having an effect and the man who won the French Open three times in four years between 1984 and 1987 repeatedly nodded in appreciation as Murray produced a far more convincing display to outclass Giraldo.
Early in the second set Murray sent down four aces in succession to win a game without his opponent managing to touch the ball — overall, the Scot won 85% of the points on his first serve and 74% on his second. In addition, he hit 31 clean winners and only 20 unforced errors; numbers that equate to a performance with which few could voice any complaints.
By Monday, Gasquet will have been fully briefed by his coaches Sebastien Grosjean and Riccardo Piatti. However, the memory of those two five-set collapses are difficult to purge from the memory. “Every match is different,” he said, as if trying to convince himself. “It’s always better to play Andy on clay than grass but I have to play a very big match, give everything and have no regrets.”
Lying in wait for the winner will probably be the sixth- seeded David Ferrer. The little Spaniard was characteristically relentless as he outplayed Mikhail Youzhny 6-0 6-2 6-2. Such was the extent of the domination that Russian Youzhny was forced to write “Sorry” in the clay to show his contrition for producing such a feeble performance.
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