“He’ll be sat there thinking, ‘What happened? What did I do? I’m a disgrace, I’ve let everyone down’.”
That was Pat Cash’s rather blunt, and slightly harsh, assessment of Andy Murray following his loss to Novak Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open on Sunday.
“He has not put up a great fight,” the 1987 Wimbledon champion told BBC Radio. “He hasn’t. Don’t put a rose tint on this.”
According to Cash, Murray “melted down and collapsed”, and it is hard to argue with that. But, let us be realistic, he lost to the best player in the game at the moment, a relentless and unshakable champion.
The world No 1 has not lost any of his five finals in Australia and the list of those who have tried and failed to beat him there includes Rafael Nadal.
For Murray, who reached the last four of a grand slam only once last season and lost three of his final four matches in 2014, the last 6-0, 6-1 to Roger Federer, taking a player like Djokovic to the limits of his physical endurance is certainly not a “disgrace”.
The first two sets took two hours and 32 minutes and the Serb was clearly struggling after that in the early parts of the third set, when Murray took a 2-0 lead.
The Scot should have taken advantage of that, but he admitted he was distracted by Djokovic’s injuries, and that proved to be a huge mistake.
Murray knew he should not be paying attention to his opponent. “Don’t worry about him,” he was heard saying on the court. “He does it all the time.”
The Scot, however, could not stop himself from “worrying” and that is something he and coach Amelie Mauresmo will need to work on in the coming months. His game is, probably, back to where it was in 2013, when Murray made the last of his seven grand slam finals, before Australia, and he is back among the top four in the rankings, as well.
The top four is now back to the Big Four again – Djokovic, Federer, Nadal and Murray, who will need to overcome his mental frailties if he wants to be remembered in the same vein as the other members of that quartet.
He has lost six of his eight grand slam finals and looks a junior member of the club if the grand slam tally is taken into consideration. Federer has a record 17, Nadal has 14 and Djokovic has reached eight.
“He unfortunately went back to his old, pre-Lendl days, where things weren’t going right and he’d blame his group and get negative,” John Lloyd, a former Australian Open finalist, told BBC. “To give the match away because of those lapses is inexcusable from a person who has won two grand slams. It again showed his weakness and he has to correct that.”
If Murray can do that, this summer could prove to be a memorable one for the home fans at Wimbledon.
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