Out of reach

Thursday 7 June 2012

If ever there was a match of missed opportunities, then Andy Murray's defeat by David Ferrer in the quarter-finals of the French Open last night was a case in point.

Andy Murray was unable to take his chances against a resilient David Ferrer as the Scot's French Open ambitions were ended yesterday. Picture: EPA

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Simon Cambers

Not because playing Ferrer on clay was a match he should have won – the Spaniard is one of the world's best players on the surface – but because it was a match that, had he taken his chances, the Scot could well have won.

In the end, Murray was undone by the brilliance, the resistance, the retrieving skills and the mental strength of Ferrer, whose 6-4, 6-7, 6-3, 6-2 triumph sent him into the semi-finals of the tournament for the first time in his career. But what will drive the world No.4 mad will be the chances that he created to seize the initiative only to either miss them or see them snatched from his grasp.Many were denied by Ferrer, who has never been more tenacious. At the age of 30, he is into the last four for the first time and Murray was generous in his praise, putting the Spaniard alongside Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in the top four clay-court players in the world. But right from the start, Murray was playing aggressive tennis and making chances for himself, only to miss out. There can be nothing more annoying.Five times he broke the Ferrer serve and each time he handed back the advantage. Two break point chances came and went in the second game of the match and after dropping his own serve in the next game, he had four more break points in the seventh game to get back on serve. When he did break back, for 4-5 in the first set thanks to some outstanding tennis, especially on his returns, he then dropped his serve to give Ferrer the first set.Going into the match, Murray knew that everything had to be perfect; he had lost his last three meetings with Ferrer on clay and even though he understood how to get it done, doing it was another matter entirely.At the start of the second set, though, Murray broke serve, only to hand it back. At 3-3, he broke again, only to give it back once more. The annoying thing was that the Scot was actually playing well, mixing up his game nicely, hitting with power on both wings and then throwing in the odd drop shot when he had the chance.A brilliantly played tie-break seemed to have turned the momentum in his favour but a rain delay of about half an hour disrupted his rhythm. Even though he broke back for 3-3, he then let his focus slip. Again, he broke serve at the start of the fourth set only to immediately drop his own and once he had been broken in the fourth game, he was almost done.Still, he had two more chances to get back on serve when Ferrer was serving at 4-2 but the Spaniard held and then broke Murray for the ninth time in the match to close out an emotional victory after three hours, 45 minutes. Murray would have liked to have served better – his success rate was only just over 50% – but the depth, power and accuracy of the Ferrer returns constantly put him on the back foot.In pure ball-striking terms, the Scot will take plenty of positives into the grass-court season – a quarter-final on his worst surface is not a bad effort – but he will still wonder what might have been.Where Murray faltered, Nadal prospered. The world No.2's 7-6, 6-2, 6-3 victory over his compatriot Nicolas Almagro was an exercise in efficiency and he is looking very much the man to beat again.The six-times champion has dropped his serve just once in the entire tournament and goes into tomorrow's semi-final against Ferrer having lost just 19 games in five matches. One 34-shot rally in the first-set tie-break summed up the entire match as world No.13 Almagro tried everything to hit through Nadal only to meet with incredible and unrelenting resistance.Nadal won it 7-4, never allowed Almagro back into the match and it is going to take a mighty effort for Ferrer or anyone to stop him."You cannot expect to win an easy match in the quarter-finals of a grand slam, the quarter-finals of Roland Garros," Nadal said. "It was a tough one but I am through and I am very happy."This year my serve is working very well. I managed to turn a match around in Monte Carlo or Barcelona or even in Rome. I lost my serve but on very few occasions. It's true that I served better during the two last rounds. When you serve a winner, then it's perfect. At the moment everything is fine. In all the tournaments where I made it to the quarter-finals or semi-finals, when I went deep in the tournament, I needed to have a very powerful serve."

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Out of reach

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