As Matteo Berrettini fired a blazing forehand beyond him to ward off a break point, Andy Murray threw his hands up in frustration and directed a quizzical look towards his box. The match was only three games old, but already it was settling into a pattern, Murray toiling to fashion chances that Berrettini would then snuff out in the blink of an eye with a sudden and brutal injection of pace.
All week long, Murray has defied the odds at the Boss Open in Stuttgart, making a mockery of his world ranking of 68th to defeat top seed Stefanos Tsitsipas – his first victory over a top-five player since 2016 – either side of wins over Alexander Bublik and Nick Kyrgios.
And for the better part of two hours and 40 minutes he defied them again, pushing the 10th-ranked Berrettini, a finalist at Wimbledon last summer, all the way to a decider before an abdominal injury effectively ended the match as a contest.
At 2-4 in the final set Murray looked ready to call it quits, trudging back to his chair midway through his service game to receive treatment. It was to no avail. The former world No 1 had already been limping after having the trainer on earlier in the set, and from that point on he was unable to reach up properly on his serve, bowling his delivery in at reduced pace to ease Berrettini’s path to a 6-4, 5-7, 6-3 victory.
“I got some pain in my ab when I was serving,” said Murray. “Not something that I’ve had before. I need to get it checked when I get home.”
With Wimbledon only a fortnight away, it is a bitter turn of events for Murray. After suffering countless minor injury setbacks and niggles since undergoing hip surgery almost three and a half years ago, he had hit a rich vein of form in Stuttgart, vindicating his decision to skip the French Open in favour of starting his grass-court preparations early. He will now move inside the top 50 for the first time in four years, but his involvement at Queen’s Club next week hangs by a thread.
A deep run in west London, where he has won a record five titles and was due to face Berrettini’s compatriot Lorenzo Sonego in his opening match, would have all but guaranteed Murray a seeded position at Wimbledon. Instead, only a day after reaching his first grass-court final since 2016, he finds himself hoping that he will not face a race against time to be fit for Wimbledon.
“It’s a really long time [since] I have played nine matches in 14 days,” said Murray, who reached the semi-finals of the Surbiton Trophy last week. “I also played Thursday through Saturday last week and then Thursday through to Sunday here. So it is probably normal that I would feel some stuff in my body, but I don’t really know the severity of it. I’ll need to get it checked out. Hopefully it is all right.”
For Berrettini, playing his first tournament in three months after undergoing minor hand surgery in March, a first title since he won at Queen’s Club last year was an unexpected boost. His firepower off the forehand and serve remains undiminished, while his touch shots and the dexterity with which he deployed his sliced backhand belied his inactivity. He is now unbeaten in nine matches at the Tennis Club Weissenhof, where he also won the title in 2019, and on this evidence the 26-year-old will once again be a major force in SW19.
“We’ve been through tough times, the first surgery of my life,” said Berrettini on court afterwards. “I thought for a second that I wouldn’t be able to play this tournament, that I was short a little bit, and now I’m here holding the trophy. It doesn’t seem real.”
To Murray, the ferocious early onslaught from Berrettini will have felt all too real. A series of huge forehands earned the Italian a break in the third game, and once he had fended off four break points with some thunderous serving to consolidate the advantage, he was on his way. Murray continued to probe for weaknesses, however, first going crosscourt to deny Berrettini the chance to dominate with his inside-out forehand, then switching the angle of attack with a probing assault on the backhand wing.
Some excellent serving dug Murray out of a hole in the ninth game of the second set, and having saved three break points he was gifted the set at 6-5 as a double fault and a wayward forehand from Berrettini saw him broken for the first time.
But Murray was broken in the opening game of the decider after receiving a time violation, and was treated for what looked like a groin problem at the changeover. He clutched that area after making a return at the start of the fourth game, and not long afterwards he was effectively rendered lame, his service speed dropping off alarmingly as his abdominal injury kicked in.
“Sorry I couldn’t get over the line today,” Murray told the crowd afterwards. “But there’s been a lot of progress the last few weeks, and I’m looking forward to what the future has to hold. I’m feeling a lot better about my game, and hopefully my body can hold up a little while longer.”