KEY POINTS:
Not the least of Andy Murray's achievements these last few days is to have won over New York, a place, of course, not so easily beguiled.
You have to be more than a name or a face. You have to have an edge, an attitude and you have to know that it is a city which above anything else is inclined to help only those who have proved they are well able to help themselves.
New Yorkers can be impatient to the point of rudeness and no doubt at Flushing Meadows they saw something of themselves in the moody, explosive young Scot.
They saw, give or take a year or two, some of one of their own - and tennis' - favourite sons, John Patrick McEnroe. They saw blazing talent and anger at the idea of defeat that is never far from the surface. They saw enough of it to persuade them that it may well survive an ordeal guaranteed to destroy all but the most resilient of competitive wills.
The ordeal, this was, of being stripped almost bare by the greatest tennis player who ever lived. Some who saw Roger Federer wilt under the force of Murray's semifinal victim, Rafael Nadal, in Paris, and then, most unforgettably on Wimbledon's Centre Court barely two months ago, feared they had seen the Swiss master retreat, perhaps irrevocably, from that high place.
Federer warned them against such feckless presumption and those who heeded his quiet, dignified words, were given a wonderful reward.
Federer achieved a kind of greatness in defeat by Nadal at Wimbledon when some of us were led to believe we might well have been watching the greatest example of competitive force and balance and style and grace ever witnessed on a single sporting occasion.
What he did on the Arthur Ashe Court, however, was something rather different - and utterly free of ambivalence.
It was an ultimate example of a great sportsman reclaiming all of his lost territory and with a certainty and a compelling brilliance which confirmed that the game of tennis, so besieged by match-fixing rumours recently, was indeed striking out into a golden age.
The year 2008 will surely go down as the one in which a sport which was supposed to be halfway to hell in a handcart filled with easy cash, obnoxious parents and some extremely dubious morality, not only found a vein of glorious competition but also unsurpassable sportsmanship.
Nadal and Federer touched the hearts of sports lovers all over the world when they fought themselves to a standstill at Wimbledon. Nadal, the victor on the Centre Court, was as generous in defeat by Murray as Federer had been at that time when many thought the spell of his game was over.
And Murray, not always famous for his courtly manner, announced that he too was ready to join a circle of great talent which was also filled with an understanding of how to win and how to lose while drawing strength from both experiences.
Murray said he now knew what he had to do to win one of these tournaments, to confirm his place alongside the three players who, until last week, had apparently created their own fiercely exclusive world, the new No 1, Nadal, Federer and the likeliest of the challengers, the beautifully gifted and resolute Australian Open-winning Serb, Novak Djokovic.
It was to work harder than ever before because if he had revealed a talent for playing shots of outrageous ambition and superb touch, he had also engaged some hard truths.
His second serve was no kind of weapon with which to threaten Federer's sublime forehand. He could hit a double backhand of lacerating power and accuracy but when it came to the killing moments, Federer had a range of options that permitted just one result.
Still, if Murray had only half pushed open the door, undoubtedly it was a gesture of serious intent and dramatically stated possibilities. Pummelled to defeat by Nadal at Wimbledon, in New York he was an infinitely more dangerous customer, much more eager to assault the confidence of a player so relentless he had inevitably been assigned the status of a force of nature.
But the gale of Nadal blew itself out somewhere between his third set fightback and Murray's discovery of another level of confidence and aggression that swept him home in the fourth. For a while Murray threatened to do the same to Federer after the defending champion's overwhelming opening impact.
There were moments when the great man offered the most candid statements of bewilderment. Murray played shots that came, it seemed, from another dimension. But then it was also clear that the resurrection of Federer was so profound it could not be brought down by mere spurts of brilliance. The job demanded a deeper will and shot-by-shot discipline.
Murray accepted the fact in some sparse sentences that spoke of mature recognition that he had accepted a challenge which did not carry even the breath of a guarantee. He now knows what he needs to do.
- INDEPENDENT
