Mardy Fish, the "almost" man of American tennis, came up with a superb display of serving under the Florida sun Saturday to beat Andy Murray, the defending champion at the Sony Ericsson Open, 6-4, 6-4.
As a shock result, it ranked right alongside Novak Djokovic’s defeat at the hands of Olivier Rochus yesterday and, strangely, last year’s finalists here put in performances of similar ineptitude. Neither Djokovic nor Murray could control their forehands, both tried drop shots at inappropriate and ultimately disastrous moments and both looked as if they would have rather been on the nearby beach than a tennis court.
Fish has never been past the third round here in nine appearances at Crandon Park and has only once managed to win back-to-back matches. But he is the sort of player — over laden with unfulfilled talent — who will grab an opening if you give him one and grow in confidence as the match wears on. That is precisely what happened here.
Murray was cruising through the first set at 3-1, 40-0 when he elected to play a totally unnecessary drop shot which plopped into the net. From there he managed to lose serve as forehands started flying long or wide.
As the Scot’s first service percentage dropped, Fish stepped in and started to do lethal things with his second serve, ripping winners passed Murray before he could move.
Murray needed to start the second set in a new frame of mind and get back to the basics. But he failed to do so. More silly errors coupled with some slashing winners from the American created a service break in the opening game. From then on it was a question of keeping his composure and maintaining the speed and accuracy of that 130 mile-per-hour first serve.
Miraculously, given Fish’s past record, he managed to do just that despite some hairy moments towards the end of the set. He had to dig himself out of 15-40 at 4-3 which he did with two deliveries that cleaned the line and then, when he served for the match, another great first serve saved a break back point.
Murray, who had been looking despondent throughout, saved one match point when Fish put a forehand into the net but this was the Floridian’s day, and another big serve earned a richly deserved victory.
The thinned-down Fish, who put himself through a rigorous diet while in re-hab from surgery last year, was obviously delighted.
“It’s great to know I can still beat these guys even after surgery,” he said. “I mean, when you have surgeries you just never know if you’re going to be back 100 percent. The knee surgery was a success and it’s been a pretty long road — pretty emotional, pretty tough. I’ve had a ton of help from a lot of people. For my wife to stay in every single night for three months with someone cooking the right food has got to be pretty tough. So I had a lot of help from her, a lot of help from my trainer and other people.”
Fish was asked if he couldn’t have been that disciplined earlier in his career: “I haven’t thought about it,” he smiled. “You know, maybe. Yeah, it would have been nice to be as mentally mature at 20 as I am now but I wasn’t so there’s no use thinking about it.”
Murray looked nothing less than sad when he appeared at the press conference a few minutes later.
“Last week was poor, too,” he said. “It’s not been great since Australia. Why? It’s something I’ve got to sort out myself. It’s purely down to me, what goes on inside my head. No one else can make that better or change it. You need to do that yourself. I need to get focused again. When I do that my game will get better.”
Both Murray and Djokovic will lose a whole heap of points from last year on the ATP computer — which works on a 52-week rotating basis — but they have both been lucky in that two of their biggest challengers, Juan Martin del Potro and Nikolay Davydenko are both absent with wrist injuries.
