As Andy Murray closed in on victory, vindication and his first top-20 scalp at a major in more than five years, the world around him stopped. Over the course of almost five spellbinding hours, Murray had flirted with triumph and disaster. He had established a two-set lead over Matteo Berrettini, then watched it go up in smoke. He had saved one match point and now had three of his own. It was agonising, enthralling, monumental; it was, in every possible sense, vintage Murray.
Earlier, excessive heat had brought the Australian Open grinding to a halt. Now the culprit was a surfeit of drama. Beneath the closed roof of Rod Laver Arena, 15,000 souls held their collective breath. Behind the scenes, Novak Djokovic gazed up at a TV monitor, as mesmerised as the rest of the watching world. Dan Evans, Murray’s erstwhile Davis Cup team-mate, leaned over a Swiss ball, mobile phone in hand, living every moment in between venting his torment in text messages to Tim Henman.
Finally, Berrettini sent down a first serve, Murray blocked back a return and – not for the first time on a day when the net tape was frequently his friend – the ball flicked up off the tape and died, confirming a 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-7 (7-9), 7-6 (10-7) victory for the five-time finalist. There were no scenes of wild celebration from Murray at first, although his emotion was palpable. Only once he had exchanged a few mutually respectful words with Berrettini was the pressure valve released, Murray returning to the court and roaring into the Melbourne night as he soaked up the crowd’s acclaim.
How Murray has worked for this moment. How he has defied the doomsayers who said he would never rekindle past glories, the defeatists who claimed that – at 35, and with a metal hip – he should step aside and let younger men have their day. By the latter stages he was even diving headlong at a forehand volley – hardly the act of man on his last legs, however ill-advised. It is hard to imagine four years have passed since the tearful Australian Open press conference at which Murray suggested the end was near, his ailing body no longer able to withstand the rigours of professional tennis. His ability to endure has been remarkable.
“The last few years, I’ve certainly questioned myself at times,” said Murray, whose last grand slam win over a top-20 opponent came against Kei Nishikori at the 2017 French Open. “There’s certainly a lot of people [who have] questioned me and my ability, whether I could still perform at the biggest events and [in] the biggest matches.
“I felt very proud of myself after the match. That’s not something that I have generally felt over the years at the end of the tennis matches. But I’m proud of the work that I put in the last few months. I trained really, really hard over in Florida, getting ready to play here. I’m really proud of how I fought through that match at the end, when it could have got away from me, how I played in the tiebreak.
“Tonight I need to give myself some credit, because the last few years have been tough. I’ve lost a few of those types of matches in the slams the last couple years, whether that’s the [Stefanos] Tsitsipas match [at the 2021 US Open] or John Isner at Wimbledon [last summer]. That one could have gone the other way tonight. But I stayed strong and I deserved to win.”
Murray had lost his previous three matches against Berrettini, most recently at Flushing Meadows in September, although you would hardly have guessed it as he swept into a 3-0 lead in just 16 minutes. An indifferent start by the Italian, who struggled to locate the court with his haymaker forehand and attempted a string of injudicious drop shots, only encouraged Murray further. Peppering the 13th seed’s backhand in the baseline exchanges and serving with authority to fend off a pair of break points in the seventh game, Murray was soon a set to the good.
The pattern continued into the next set, where Murray once again secured an early break, scooping a sharply angled backhand pass beyond Berrettini to establish an advantage he was never in serious danger of relinquishing. By the time Berrettini’s touch deserted him as he attempted to deal with a rather average Murray drop shot at set point down, his senses seemed as scrambled as his game.
Yet the Italian was not done. He returned from a bathroom break with renewed determination and, though he failed to convert an early break point, he greeted a tenacious hold in the fourth game with a roar of defiance. Clearly the inner fire was still burning, and when he knifed a majestic sliced backhand winner to bring up another opportunity on Murray’s serve, the Scot finally faltered for the first time, hooking a forehand wide. With Berrettini impregnable on serve, the scene was set for a titanic finale.
The pair matched each other step for step in the fourth, which eventually came down to a tiebreak in which Murray three times stood within two points of victory. Desperate to get over the line, he even attempted a diving volley on one occasion, nudging the ball fractionally over the baseline. But Berrettini was not to be denied and, as they went into the decider, the momentum was firmly on his side.
The key moment came when Murray faced a match point in the 10th game. With the court at his mercy after a tentative approach-cum-drop-shot, Berrettini rolled a backhand into the net and looked to the heavens with a rueful smile. He would not get another opportunity.
“It’s impressive what he could do after so many surgeries, after all the kilometres that he ran in his career,” said Berrettini. “It’s impressive. It just shows how much he loves the game, how much he loves these kind of matches.”