Puncher vs. counter-puncher makes sense. One player attacks, the other uses that pace to fire back. Puncher vs. puncher isn’t as elegant, but you can certainly follow it. Two guys take turns belting the ball. Counter-puncher vs. counter-puncher is harder to figure. Neither can play their game. They’re robbed of something to punch against.
Andy Murray vs. Alexander Dolgopolov was the latter, and it was predictably unpredictable. If it showed us anything, it showed us how deeply ingrained Murray’s defensive mind-set is. For the most part, it was Dolgopolov who attacked and Murray who defended. Murray’s speed and consistency allowed him to remain the counter-puncher, and allowed him to win in four sets. The Ukrainian played well and tried just about everything, but he couldn’t hit through him.
“Hitting with him on the baseline was just suicidal,” Dolgopolov said. “He wasn’t going to give me anything. I had to go after it.”
Dolgopolov was a crowd favorite today. His coach is naturalized Aussie and former low-level pro Jack Reader, a leathery, longhaired character who sported a cap in the colors of the national flag in honor of Australia day. Cries for Dolgopolov—known as “Alex!” here—outnumbered cries for Murray by roughly 5 to 1 this afternoon.
He’s an easy player to like. Dolgopolov walks on his toes between points, and he appears to float a little above the surface during them. He’s as loose as they get, for better and worse. The freedom that allows him to coast to his left and twist in the air for an inside-out forehand is the same freedom that allows him to chuck in an ill-advised forehand drop shot on a critical point late in a set.
“He hits different,” Murray said. “It was tough to get my rhythm.”
The two players traded sidewinding slice backhands and on the rise two-handed crosscourts. They traded running one-handed shovel backhand winners. They traded heavy topspin crosscourt forehands. There plenty of long games, but Murray was, as Dolgopolov, “more solid.”
“He’s one the smartest players on tour,” Dolgopolov said. “He really breaks your game.”
Murray dropped his first set of the tournament today. By his own admission, he got tight in the third-set tiebreaker. Otherwise, he’s in good, standard form going forward. He bounced back from that breaker by winning 12 straight points at the start of the fourth.
“He was making me run more than any of my other opponents,” Dolgopolov said of Murray’s surge.
So now what? We presume, as of this writing, that Murray will play Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. Can he beat him with this good, standard form? Last year the two met in the quarterfinals, and Murray won by playing some of the most aggressive tennis of his career. His backhand, in particular, was a controlling stroke in that match.
"I feel like I’m hitting the ball bigger than last year,” Murray says.
Aside from that, though, there’s not a lot that's new about the man. His game is the same and his demeanor off the court is as even-keel as ever. There hasn’t been much discussion of him here so far. Now Murray is back to that point again, the point he’s always asked about, one of only four chances he’ll get this year to make an advance in his career. As always, he’s playing it straight and low-key, no special desires or ambitions revealed. He did crack a couple of smiles in his presser today, but mostly it was the same expressionless monotone, and the same answers about "the player who plays the best" being the one who is going to win, and if he doesn’t it’s not the end of the world.
That’s a theme we’ve heard quite a bit at this tournament, from Roger Federer to Caroline Wozniacki to Jo-Wilfred Tsonga to Andy Murray. It seems like a healthy way to think, but Murray must know that to beat Nadal it can’t be business as usual. He’ll have to push out of the defensive shell that served him so well today. From a personal perspective, it would be sweet to see Murray hoist the trophy here; he’s the only one of the “Big 4” without a major, and I'm curious as to what his reaction would be. A smile? A tear?
As Murray moves on, Dolgopolov flies on to the tour’s next stop. He says he’ll try to get visas to play the clay events in South America next month. He’s a player we’ll hope to see more of very soon. Aside from his balletic game, he’s also a very relaxed press-room presence. He says that despite the big Melbourne pay day, he’s sticking with his Subaru. When he was asked if he was “amazed” by what he did here, Dolgopolov shrugged and said, “Yeah, for sure I’m really happy. I’m confident and I think I can do good.”
“Have you heard from a lot of people, like your parents?”
“Yeah, my parents are watching all the time, cheering for me. They’re really happy. A lot of my friends as well. So it’s really nice.”
The big names take over from here. But amidst the tension and drama of the weekend to come, I may find myself missing Dolgopolov’s easy play and easy ways.