In times of trouble, it's always best to rely on Andy Murray. The nation’s politicians may be in disarray, England’s footballers may be in disgrace but Murray marches on regardless.
He played himself into top form to get the better of Yen-Hsun Lu 6-3, 6-2, 6-1 and reach the third round. If he can keep up the level of aggression and power that he showed in the latter stages of the match, he will be an all but unstoppable force in the coming rounds. The start might have been a bit slow for his coach’s liking – Ivan Lendl can be pretty demanding – but the finish was mightily impressive.
“The first set was tough – I went a break down,” Murray said. “But I settled down at the end of that set and loosened up. I started hitting the ball a lot cleaner.”
The world No.2 against the world No.76 would seem, on paper, to be a fairly straightforward route to the third round. But that was not accounting for Lu’s ambitions and his experience around these courts: this is his 13th Wimbledon campaign, and back in 2010 he reached the quarter-finals.
After five minutes, Murray was a break down and had won just two points. His opponent was moving well, he was serving with precision and he was using his backhand to torment the Scot. The forehand was a little less reliable but Lu was playing out of his skin and was 3-1 up. Murray was looking a little concerned. Lendl up in the players’ box did not move a nerve-ending.
Lu’s father used to raise chickens – stick with us: this does relate to the tennis – and he used to get his son to do some chores around the coops. When the birds needed rounding up and putting back under cover, Lu Junior was recruited for the job – Yen-Hsun was a part-time chicken chaser. But he did not like it much. Dad’s chooks were pungent little pullets and so Yen-Hsun got the job done as quickly as he could to get away from the smell.
Such early training stood him in good stead for his professional career – there may not be much of Lu (he stands 5ft 11in in a world of giants) but what he has got moves like lightning around the court. However, Lightning Lu was up against one of the fittest men on the tour and, when he tried nipping about a bit in an attempt to control matters, Murray showed him who was boss.
Steering the Scot from one side of the court to the other, he could only stand and watch as the world No.2 ran flat out to clatter a forehand into the smallest of spaces down the line. Murray had made his point: you are fast but I am faster. And I can hit winners while I’m at it.
The fates have not been kind to Lu of late. He missed the first few months of the season while he recovered from elbow surgery and since he has come back to work, he has only played two Tour-level events: Wimbledon and the French Open.
In Paris, he drew Novak Djokovic in the first round and here he had Murray in the second round. The world’s two best players on two completely different surfaces and yet exactly the same result.
But he has been busy on the Challenger circuit and came to SW19 having won 14 of 15 matches on grass in the past few weeks. By the time he faced Murray, he was on an 11-match winning streak. Murray, though, is a shrewd tactician. It seldom takes him long to work out what the opposition is up to and, sure enough, he soon realised that Lu was not happy at the net (the net is another country; they do things differently there).
So Murray set to with the drop shots. He brought his man into the danger zone and made him suffer when he got there. Getting his break back, he secured the first set and took the lead in the second with a run of eight games.
As he moved into top gear, Murray was relentless and he was brutal. He bludgeoned Lu with his serve, he covered every blade of grass to give Lu no space to plant a winner and he pummelled the smaller man with the weight and precision of his ground strokes.
After two sets, Lu had run out of ideas. After two-and-a-half sets, Lu had run out of puff. Murray was in blistering form by that stage and was on his way to play John Millman in the third round.
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