Tennis: Service without a smile

It wasn't meant to be this way. Since the beginning of this Australian Open, the consensus was that the two giants of world tennis, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, were on a collision course, cruising through opposite sides of the draw to an inevitable meeting in tonight's men's singles final.

It was as certain as the fact that Australian crowds would find some pretext for patriotic cheering even after the local hopes, Lleyton Hewitt and Samantha Stosur, were ingloriously bundled out in week one.

The world No 1, Caroline Wozniacki, made the cut: she featured in a brief outbreak this week of "Wozzy, Wozzy, Wozzy! Oi, Oi, Oi!", which chilled the blood of any journo who remembers the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

But the Rafa and Roger Show closed early. Instead, the biggest sporting title of the southern summer will be fought out between the world No 3, the Serb Novak Djokovic, in the hunt for his second Grand Slam title (he won this tournament in 2008) - and Andy Murray.

It's hard not to utter the name without a sinking heart.

The battle-hardened tennis writers around the press room sighed and rolled their eyes when I asked them who they were backing in the dour Scot's semifinal clash that evening against Spaniard (and Auckland Heineken Open champ) David Ferrer.

"Murray, I guess," they all said, gloomily. It's not the game they're worried about; it's having to interview the man afterwards, a task not unlike pulling teeth.

It's entirely unfair, I know, to expect great players in any code to be song-and-dance men. But like it or not, sport at this level is equal parts athletic contest and showbiz. Not for nothing are these tennis players called stars - a term older than the movies, it was originally applied to vaudevillians - and they are in the entertainment business.

Tournaments like this are assisted by the generosity of corporate sponsors but the spectators fork out, too: the paying punter in Rod Laver Arena tonight will have shelled out A$339 ($434) for one hard plastic seat.

And Murray has earned around $3.4 million a year since he turned pro in 2005, already more than half of Laver's inflation-adjusted career earnings. He'll pick up A$1.1m tonight if he loses, A$2.2m if he wins.

He signed a five-year, $20m endorsement deal with adidas in 2009. It's not like being Tom Cruise or anything but they're not bad wages, and he gets more sun in a week than most Scotsmen see in a lifetime. Is it too much to expect a little couth, some grace under fire - and maybe, just occasionally, a smile?

For Murray, apparently, the answer is "yes". He arrives on the practice courts here looking faintly ill, barely acknowledging the fans who have assembled behind the fence to cheer him. The fans for their part, presumably knowing what to expect, stay away in droves.

On court, when he hits a winner, he walks back to his position with his shoulders slumped, like a schoolboy with too much homework. When a shot goes wide, he does this sort of flared-lip snarl like a horse in a smiling competition (unkindly, TV producers are fond of replaying it in super slow motion).

During his quarter-final against the unseeded Ukrainian Alexandr Dolgopolov (one of the week's real bolters and a crowd favourite) Murray seemed to take exception to involuntary gasps from spectators during a dramatic see-saw rally. You didn't have to be a lip-reader to tell that, after he lost the point, he asked us all to "shut the f*** up!" And there weren't a lot of giggles during his brutally cheerless, error-strewn grind to beat a gutsy and occasionally brilliant David Ferrer in his Friday night semifinal either.

As one columnist in a Melbourne paper this week remarked, there are unconfirmed reports that Murray has smiled. Once.

When Glaswegian super-comic Billy Connolly put in an appearance in Murray's box, it inspired the on-court interviewer Jim Courier to ask the player whether he knew any good jokes. Murray pointed to another fellow in the box and said "The guy in the blue shirt believes in aliens. I'll leave it at that." Yep, it went straight over my head, too.

Even Djokovic, whose haughty and macho on-court behaviour suggests a disagreeable, even intimidating contender, knows how to party, starting practice sessions by playing court soccer with his mates and hamming it up for the crowd.

The sense of disappointment around Melbourne Park when first Nadal and then Federer were brushed aside on successive nights was almost palpable.

No wonder: the Nadal-Federer rivalry is one of the classics, like the Sampras-Agassi and the McEnroe-Borg tussles. We would have seen the Swiss maestro Federer defend his title, and also relished the possibility that Nadal, the world No 1, would complete the "Rafa Slam" - holding all four Grand Slam titles at once, even if not in a calendar year.

Only two other men have accomplished that: the great Rod Laver, after whom the centre-court arena of this tournament is named, did it twice, in 1962 as a 23-year-old amateur and again in 1969; and the American Don Budge won six Slams on the trot in 1937 and 1938.

Both those men, of course, scooped the pool in a calendar year - an achievement out of Nadal's reach, thanks to Federer's victory in this tournament last January. But in this era of men's competition, where no single player bestrides the tennis world like a colossus, four consecutive titles are almost as much of a holy grail as all four in a year.

The buzz around the press room is that legions of British journalists are in the air now that Murray's in the final. No Briton has won a men's Grand Slam tournament since Fred Perry took the last of his eight, Wimbledon in 1936.

It remains to be seen whether Murray can make their trip worthwhile and break the long drought - not least because Melbourne today will swelter in in 40 degree-plus heat and the sun-baked court won't be a lot cooler by start time.

There is also the small matter of a fiercely aggressive and hungry Djokovic to deal with. But if the great Scot does it, let's hope he cracks a smile. Just a little one.