Andy Murray had one eye on his opponent and one on the clock as his Wimbledon third-round clash against Marcos Baghdatis turned into a tension-soaked race against time under Centre Court’s roof on Saturday.
The scoreboard at the end showed the No. 4 seed had won 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 6-1, but it was the time in the top left corner that had most people transfixed.
Murray had to get the encounter wrapped up before the 11pm cut-off time for play under the roof lights, a deadline imposed by local authorities, or he would have been forced to come back today to finish off the Cypriot.
Photo: AFP
A mid-match wobble in which he lost the second set followed by an extended delay as the giant mechanical roof was heaved into place ensured the seconds were ticking away as he eventually stamped his authority on the match in the fourth set when Baghdatis seemed to lose heart.
With a double break in the bank, the result was hardly in doubt, but all eyes were on the umpire to see if he was going to allow the final game to play as the clock ticked past the deadline.
Murray did not even sit down when the players changed ends at 4-1, hurrying to the other end while glancing anxiously at the time. As it turned out, Murray wasted precious few seconds, racing through the final two games and firing down an ace to bring up match point.
When Baghdatis sent a forehand return long to bring an end to the spectacle the, clock had ticked round to 11:02pm, making it the latest finish in Wimbledon history.
“I think if the set had been tighter, it would have been distracting,” Murray, who had seemed in trouble when going a break down in the third set, told a small group of reporters while having his post-match aches eased by a massage in the locker room. “Because then momentum was with me, I just wanted to keep it going and play fairly quickly whereas for him, it would have been better to slow it down a little bit.”
“I was under the impression that at 11 o’clock we would stop regardless of what the score was and I broke serve to go 5-1 and then walked to the net because I thought we were to have to come back on Monday,” Murray said. “Even at 5-1, that match still could have gone on. It was just lucky I finished it in a couple of minutes.”
The match itself will not earn a place in the Murray scrapbook for the quality of the tennis on show, especially in the first three sets when the Cypriot was frequently able to dictate from the back of the court.
Murray, troubled by the windy conditions before the roof closed, had claimed the first set without setting Centre Court on fire, breaking in the 11th game as Baghdatis sent a risky dropshot attempt wide.
He looked to be cruising when he swiftly went a break up at the start of the second, but the flow turned and the Cypriot started to take the chances that Murray offered him.
The Briton was tumbling around the court, unable to stay on his feet and was even penalized for allowing balls to fall out of his pocket in mid rally.
The world No. 4 seemed able to craft break-point chances at will, but nine went begging in the second set, while Baghdatis clinically dispatched his own to draw level.
After a nip and tuck third that Murray, with tape on his knee and a grimace on his face, closed out with a sizzling backhand pass after recovering from 4-2 behind, came an all-out onslaught in which the Scot blitzed past Baghdatis to finish the match on fast forward.
After Rafael Nadal’s shock exit on Thursday last week and Roger Federer’s great escape 24 hours later, Murray’s victory meant it was the third night in a row the roof had been in play.
Like the other two, Nadal’s shock defeat by Lukas Rosol and Roger Federer’s great escape against Julien Bennetteau, its implementation was not without an element of controversy.
“I think with the roof there’s always going to be some difficult situations for the tournament director or the referee,” Murray said. “Like today it was a perfect example. Do we start the match with the roof on so there’s no delays, or, yesterday I think they got criticized quite a lot because it didn’t rain at all and the roof was shut the whole day, when it shouldn’t have been, because it’s obviously meant to be an outdoor event.”
Murray will now face Croatian Marin Cilic in the last 16.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier