With his grumbling hip and awkward gait, Andy Murray has been the master illusionist, a limping, creaking wonder at this Wimbledon.
The gentleman’s champion enters the quarter-finals for the 10th straight year here today, still forcing us to rub our eyes as we behold a sorcerer who can appear to be hobbling in evident discomfort between points before suddenly morphing into the supreme, quicksilver athlete of legend.
Benoit Paire, his opponent in the last round, evidently felt it was like watching a rabbit materialising from a magician’s hat. Hey presto, will the mirage continue today as big Sam Querrey, the homespun big hitter now residing in Las Vegas, becomes the latest to seek the jackpot against our Andy on Centre Court?
Sam’s real easy to like, everyone says. At his high school, his mates would support him by dressing up like Japanese warriors and hailing him as ‘Samurai Sam’ and, sure enough, on occasion, as with last year’s seismic slaying of Novak Djokovic here, the raging warrior does materialise in good old goofy Querrey.
Somehow, though, this fine player with more than 6,500 aces and nine titles to his name has still managed to stroll on fairly unheralded. Indeed, he probably got more recognition as a lonely bachelor seeking love on the US reality show Millionaire Matchmaker although wasn’t it typical of Sam’s lot that, having found his gal Kylie, she subsequently ignored his text messages?
Murray, who reckons he’s improving by the match and will guarantee his world No.1 spot for another week with victory, usually finds a way past Querrey - it’s 7-1 to the Briton - just as Roger Federer normally handles Milos Raonic’s firepower, having earned a 9-3 career advantage over the 2016 finalist.
Ah, but it’s the snapshots of the Canadian’s breakthrough win over Federer in last year’s semi-final that play on the memory. There was the great man tumbling heavily, his body giving up on him, his mind tormented into the unthinkable of two straight double faults. When he left the court that day, some even wondered if it might just be the last time we saw Federer on Centre.
Now, look at him. Back there for his 100th Wimbledon match and 50th Grand Slam quarter-final - goodness, his first took place in a different millennium - he’s swanned through without dropping a set and even Raonic concedes that Federer has played better than anyone “hands down” in 2017, describing his entire regeneration as “sublime”.
Still, Federer won’t take anything for granted. Facing someone who's crashed down 91 aces already this Wimbledon is, he says, like being in a penalty shoot-out. In which case then, Federer must be German-Swiss.
Of course, while his massed fan club mourn Rafael Nadal’s departure from these Championships, the delightful rise of Gilles Muller, whose 15-13 fifth set triumph is already enshrined in Wimbledon lore, must be right royally cheered - and not just by his tennis-playing friend at courtside, Prince Félix of Luxembourg.
Like Querrey, father-of-two Muller is one of the tour’s good guys and his 2017 annus mirabilis is, in its own way, every bit as astounding as Federer’s comeback, as he’s won his first two titles after 16 years of trying and now reached only his second Grand Slam quarter-final at 34.
It’s all like something from a movie, he reckons, considering how four years ago, he suffered an elbow injury serious enough to make him fear for his tennis future. Unable to wield a racket, he worked on his strength and fitness instead to career-changing effect.
Still, though, even having delivered a tournament-best 102 aces, he starts as underdog on No.1 Court against Marin Cilic, the former US Open champion who’s not yet lost a set, has clocked up (a mere) 72 aces and beat Muller recently in a tight affair at Queen’s Club.
In the other last-eight encounter on No.1 Court, you cannot envy the task of Tomas Berdych, the 2010 finalist who’s seemingly turned round his miserable season after splitting with his coach, former champion Goran Ivanisevic, and teaming up with an old Czech playing pal Martin Stepanek only to now run into his serial tormentor, Novak Djokovic.
What does he need to do to beat a man who holds a 25-2 head-to-head advantage against him and has won the last 14 sets they’ve played? “Well, I mean, it’s one thing describing. The other is to do it on the court,” sighs ‘Big Berd’, who at least knows Djokovic has had a day’s less rest after having to play Adrian Mannarino.
He’ll just have to summon a version of the old line that Vitas Gerulaitis once spun so beautifully: “No-one beats Tomas Berdych 13 times in a row..”
