Time and time again Andy Murray has shown that he is never more dangerous than when he feels aggrieved. So when the umpire Carlos Ramos penalised the world No 1 when he was a set down against Kei Nishikori by taking away one of his first serves for a second time violation, it somehow felt inevitable that it would prove to be the turning point of the match.
There was much work to do from there, Murray going on to wrestle the momentum back and claim a 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7-0), 6-1 victory, which takes him into a fifth Roland Garros semi-final tomorrow, equalling the total of his coach Ivan Lendl and Andre Agassi. But the impact of Ramos’s intervention should not be underestimated.
Having received a warning during the first set for exceeding the 20 seconds permitted between points on his serve, Murray was penalised at 1-1, deuce, in the second set after aborting his ball toss. “I’ve been on tour so long and I’ve never seen that,” Murray complained to Ramos, who has a history of clamping down on time-wasting, before subsequently holding serve.
“For a couple of points after that I was fired up, because I was frustrated at that moment” he admitted later. “It felt to me like it was a strange decision. I have never seen anyone get a warning after they have missed the ball toss.” The incident further brought the issue of time between points to the fore. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have both had run-ins with Ramos during this tournament, the former feeling so aggrieved that he threatened to have the Portuguese umpire banned from taking charge of his matches.
Bizarrely, players have to ensure that they serve within two different time limits throughout the year. In ATP matches, which are played over the best of three sets, the limit is 25 seconds, while the grand-slam rule, in best-of-five-set matches, is 20 seconds. There is also no indicator of time between points on the court, such as a shot clock, to which players can refer.
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“It’s possible that I’m playing too slow,” Murray said. “I don’t know, because we don’t have the clock on the court, so it’s impossible for us to tell. You’re allowed 20 seconds here, the rest of the year it’s 25 seconds. How are the players supposed to know that in their head when we’re playing at one speed throughout the whole year, and then you show up at the slams, you’re expected to speed up by five seconds?
“If I was playing much slower than I was the rest of the tournament, then I’m sorry for that. I’ll try to speed up.
“I think if someone is intentionally slowing a match, they should be punished for that, but it’s a rule that is going to be challenging regardless of whether there is a clock on the court or not.”
Murray had struggled with his timing and rhythm in the initial blustery conditions as Nishikori, the Japanese eighth seed, looked to take advantage by swatting away any balls that landed short. Murray could only look on from the back of the court as a Nishikori drop shot sealed the first set after 33 minutes.
After Murray’s altercation with Ramos, Nishikori dropped serve for 1-3 by wildly hitting a smash long, followed by a double fault. Murray had sparked to life, often loudly uttering “let’s go”, as he went on to take the second set. Nishikori’s resistance in the third set took it to a tie-break, before he threw in a woeful string of points. Murray won it 7-0, only the second time in his career that he had won a tie-break without dropping a single point, and was by far the fitter man as he eased to victory, albeit not with his finest performance, in two hours and 39 minutes.
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“I didn’t feel like I played great tennis,” Murray said. “It’s a huge step in the right direction. Anyone can win matches when they are playing well. It’s winning when you’re not playing your best [that] is more impressive.
“If someone had offered me a semi-final spot before the tournament, I would have signed up for that because I was not playing well at all. It’s been really good so far, I want to keep going.”
Tomorrow, Murray will hope for a repeat of last year’s semi-final against Stan Wawrinka, in which he played one of the best clay-court matches of his career to triumph in four sets. Waw- rinka, the 2015 champion, is in ominous form, though, the 32-year-old defeating Marin Cilic 6-3, 6-3, 6-1 to become the oldest man since Jimmy Connors in 1985 to reach the last-four here.
Murray is, in fact, the only player in the semi-final line-up to have dropped sets at this year’s tournament, after Wawrinka, Nadal and Dominic Thiem all cruised through. “They are all obviously playing extremely well,” Murray said. “I came in playing garbage. I’m the odd one out in the semis, but hopefully I can keep it up.”
