So far this week at Queen’s it has been adiós Rafa Nadal, adieu Stan Wawrinka and, on Thursday, whatever the Bulgarian is for “thanks for coming” Grigor Dimitrov, as the defending champion joined the queue of leading players bundled out of the singles at the Aegon Championships.
Andy Murray, the No1 seed and three-times champion, also briefly flirted with embarrassment before seeing off the stubborn but erratic Fernando Verdasco in a little over an hour and a half, 7-5, 6-4, and plays the big-serving Gilles Müller of Luxembourg in the quarter-finals.
Murray was a long time coming into his press conference but dispelled fears he might be nursing an injury before Wimbledon. “When you start changing surface, you get sore in different places,” he said. “After the first match I felt OK. After doubles yesterday I felt a little bit stiff, lower back and the backs of the legs. Today I just wanted to make sure, go over everything with my physio, so that they understand exactly what it is I’m feeling, and then get all of the right treatment and my warm-downs done and eat properly, because I want to recover well.
“I’m going to play every single day now until the end of the tournament. It’s a bit different at slams. You have more time to recover, whereas here, when you’re changing surfaces and only having sometimes less than 24 hours, you need to have your priorities right.”
The match was an oddly disjointed affair. Murray railed at himself throughout as he slowly found his rhythm on grass – although he reckoned he moved better than he did in his opening match against Lu Yen-hsun – while Verdasco swung his strong left arm from the hip without much regard for the consequences. Almost inevitably, he gifted Murray the match, with three of his 10 double faults arriving in the final game; that’s wrapping it up in silver paper and putting a shiny ribbon on it.
Sliding from 4-1 up to 4-all in the first set did not represent disaster but it was uncomfortable for Murray, given their history on London grass; Verdasco famously led him two sets to love before Murray turned it around and went on to win Wimbledon in 2013 and, although the stakes here were considerably lower, the world No3 needs quality time on grass before heading for the All England Club. He should get it against Müller.
In the first quarter of an hour, the ball was leaving Murray’s racket sweetly but Verdasco, having started the match with double fault, ace, double fault, finally hit a few spots with ball in hand to bring tension to the contest. Murray’s banker always has been and always will be his defence and the Spaniard now found it much tougher to crack. Murray had two set points before Verdasco found a little extra pop on his ground strokes to force deuce, before overcooking another wild thrash from the baseline to hand Murray the first frame in 44 minutes.
Murray had to save a break point to hold at the start of the second set, although he was helped by his opponent’s continued indiscipline. In the third game Murray held from 0-40, and needed four points on the spin for 3-2. When Verdasco’s serve completely fell to pieces at the end, Murray was happy to retreat to the locker room with the win.
He could hardly have a more contrasting challenge in the quarter-finals, where he meets another leftie in Müller, who is in frightening form on serve at 32 – as Murray has noticed. “He served 37 aces in the first round,” he said. “I haven’t served that many the whole year [Murray actually has 245 to Muller’s 381].”
Murray added: “He is coached by a good friend of mine, Jamie Delgado, who has played here a number of times and we have practised and warmed up together. We know each other’s games well and he is a very good grass-court player. It is going to be very tough.”
When Müller played Dimitrov earlier in the day, he could not quite match the howitzer serving rate that demolished Mikhail Youzhny in the first round but, just as Wawrinka, the French Open champion, had suffered on the end of 22 aces by Kevin Anderson on Wednesday, so the Bulgarian found 19 free serving points and 35 clean winners by Müller too much to handle. It was Müller’s second win this year over Dimitrov, who went out in the first round at Roland Garros and has yet to put together a run to suggest he will be a significant threat at Wimbledon.
Müller, who has had his moments in a solid career and had to cope with six months out when his left elbow gave up on him in 2013, took an hour and a quarter to win 6-4, 7-6.
It’s been a tournament of towering dominance for the big servers: John Isner, at 6ft 10in, has hit 57 aces, followed by 6ft 4in Müller (56), 6ft 6in Milos Raonic (53) and 6ft 8in Anderson (44). Isner needed three tie-break sets on Thursday to defeat another strong server, Feliciano López, in a match that did not feature a single break, while Viktor Troicki came back from a set down to beat Marin Cilic 6-7, 6-2, 6-3.
Dimitrov, meanwhile, remains upbeat. “I think everything is going to be fine for me,” he said. “It’s a tough loss but I give credit to Gilles.”
But, as they say in Bulgaria, it was another case of blagodarya, che doidokhte.
