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A big man who just got a bit bigger: Andy Murray and Great Britain win the Davis Cup over Belgium

DAVIS CUP, Nov. 29 – The 2015 tennis season is over, and it may have ended on the shot of the year. Andy Murray has steered Great Britain to its first Davis Cup title since 1936, the last of the golden years British tennis enjoyed before Fred Perry retired. Murray beat David Goffin of Belgium 6-3, 7-5, 6-3 to win the Davis Cup for the 10^th time and set his own record for the most live rubbers won in a year.

If great drama is made by confounding expectations, this would not count as great drama. The British were expected to win 3-1, and they duly did. But if drama can also be finding the most breathtaking shot at the most crucial moment, then Andy Murray’s lob on match point was one of the shots of the year.

It was the Scot’s second match point. On the first he had dumped a backhand return into the net off a nervy second serve. On the second he got into a long rally, which Goffin appeared to be controlling. On the 17^th shot, Goffin drove a forehand into Murray’s forehand corner. Murray did well to get it back. Goffin stepped in for the kill, driving his forehand to the Murray backhand. But Murray read it, stepped across and played the most exquisite lob on the 20^th stroke to seal the trophy for the British. A short worthy of the moment!

Anyone not in the stadium or watching on television would note the result as exactly what most people expected. But Goffin played well. His performance was vastly better than his paltry display three weeks ago when Murray beat him 6-1, 6-0 at the Paris Masters, and while he lacked the presence to seriously threaten Murray, he offered a constant reminder that he was good enough to seize the initiative if Murray’s level dropped.

But then Murray has been outstanding all year. Because of the ITF’s custom of counting dead rubbers as part of Davis Cup records, Murray’s 11 wins this year leaves him still behind John McEnroe and level with Michael Stich and Ivan Ljubicic. But three of McEnroe’s 12 wins in 1982 were dead rubbers, and one of Stich’s in 1993 was; Ljubicic’s 11 wins in 2005 were all live, but he lost his final match to Dominik Hrbaty on the final day of the final. By contrast, Murray has won 11 out of 11, all live, and only didn’t play against the Bryan twins in March’s first round because James Ward had beaten John Isner on the Friday so Murray was rested for the doubles. He can therefore count as the most successful Davis Cup player in a single year since the World Group began in 1981, and following this triumph Ljubicic tweeted that Murray’s achievement in 2015 is greater than his from 2005.

If that feels like a trick with statistics, there’s no doubting Murray’s colossal status as a team player. Although he is the best tennis player the British have ever produced (with the possible exception of Perry, but the level of competition was so much less intense in the 1930s), he is not the only top-level British player since the second world war. Before tennis went open there were Mike Sangster and Mike Davies. Just after it went open, there was a generation of Mark Cox and Roger Taylor, who were closely followed by John and David Lloyd. The Lloyd brothers joined with Cox and Buster Mottram to reach the final in 1978, but that’s as close as the British have come since Perry. Even the twin-flag-carriers Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, both of whom reached fourth in the rankings, never got beyond the first round of the world group.

Much as this triumph is a single-handed one for Murray, the energy he brought to the team even five years ago has been very important. The appointment of Leon Smith as captain in 2010 was significant, in that Smith had coached Murray from age 11 to 15, so there was a trusting relationship there. Smith’s first tie in charge was to avoid relegation to the bottom tier of the Davis Cup, and Murray made it clear he would not always be available to play so he expected Britain’s other players to carry some of the load.

Only in September 2013 did Murray commit fully to playing every tie. By then the British were the playoff round for the world group, having rallied from 0-2 down to beat Russia in April 2013, with James Ward and Dan Evans winning clutch rubbers on the final day. So when Murray talks about this Davis Cup triumph being a team effort, he is not being polite or parading false modesty – he is genuinely aware of the contribution made by the players ranked lower than him.

It was a point he regularly emphasised in Great Britain’s 2015 run. Having won Olympic gold, the US Open and Wimbledon, the Davis Cup was his next target, and he recognised very early that this was a team pursuit, however dependent the British were on him. And not just the other players, but also the backroom staff of coaches, physios, etc.

The word ‘team’ is more important than ‘patriotic’ in Murray’s context. He represents two countries – Scotland and Great Britain – and is a very proud Scot. Although he didn’t have a vote in last year’s referendum on Scottish independence (because he lives in England), he let it be known late in the campaign that he had been inspired by the independence campaign and would have voted to secede from the United Kingdom if he’d been so enfranchised.

Yet here he was crying his eyes out in emotional triumph for the entity he’d have voted to break away from. In that respect it was more like a golfer winning for the European Ryder Cup team than for a player winning for his nation, more a triumph for the team backed by a geographical entity than for any sense of patriotism. When asked after his win over Goffin who the passion was for, he talked much more about his team-mates than about his country.

“Always when I’ve played Davis Cup, since I was 17, I’ve been unbelievably passionate,” he said. “I loved it when I played the doubles against Israel [his debut]. That hasn’t changed, but also I know all this team extremely well, and because we’ve been together for such a long time there’s a stronger bond between us than there has been in the past, and I think all the players get on with each other, respect each other, and a lot of us are close friends, so it means a lot to do it with them.”

Murray’s biggest problem remains that his on-court persona endears him to so few people. Even his country folk sometimes find it hard to warm to him, yet he is held in the highest esteem by those who know him off-court. The Belgian captain Johan van Herck said after this final, “I’m very pleased for Andy. He deserves this both as a sportsman and as a human being. I’ve known him since he was a junior, and while he sometimes pushes things to the limit when he’s on court, he is always a very decent man off the court, always interested in people. He’s a big man.”

And as the last member of the ‘big four’ to win the Davis Cup, he’s a bit bigger now.

Murray brothers take doubles, up 2-1 over Belgium

Andy Murray has the second of three wins he’s looking for in Ghent. Mal Taam/MALT Photo

FROM THE DAVIS CUP FINAL IN GHENT, BELGIUM – By all economic logic, doubles as a spectator sport ought to be dead by now. The gulf between public interest in singles and doubles seems to grow each year, and the ATP has only saved the doubles circuit by a change in the scoring system that effectively limits the length of matches.

And yet the corpse continues to breathe, especially in Davis Cup where the doubles can still be pivotal, despite making up just 20 percent of a weekend’s action. The doubles in this final was a case in point, not just pivotal, but a very watchable match. Great Britain’s Andy and Jamie Murray’s 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Belgium’s Steve Darcis and David Goffin is unlikely to be memorable as a great contest, but it was a fascinating tactical encounter which had some great points, and the result makes it hard to see anything other than the British claiming a tenth Davis Cup title on Sunday.

And yet there was something unsatisfying about it. The weakest link among the four was, by some way, Jamie Murray. He looked almost out of his depth at times, and his kid brother had to bail him out on numerous occasions. Darcis and Goffin, playing together for just the fifth time (including two Challengers), targeted the left-handed Murray, and allowed him no confidence on his returns, many of which he lobbed more in hope than expectation.

Eventually Jamie woke up, most noticeably after dropping serve early in the third set, and by the end his volleys were sharp. But his serve was always shaky, and Andy was the only member of the quartet not to be broken.

And yet, if one looks at the doubles rankings, Jamie is seventh, while Andy is at 180, Goffin at 378, and Darcis 596. And the reason Andy, Goffin and Darcis played when higher-ranked doubles players were available is that they are better players – they just don’t play enough doubles to have better rankings. In effect, when it comes to Davis Cup, singles rankings generally are a better guide to doubles prowess than doubles rankings.

That is not to knock doubles on the tour. The doubles competition at the recent ATP World Tour finals produced some great matches and human interest stories, capped by a 34-year-old from the Caribbean, Jean-Julien Rojer, reaching the top of his profession having grown up with self-taught strokes in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, with very little help until the Grand Slam Development Fund picked him up at 13. Tour doubles has clearly found its niche, serving a useful purpose as a sub-tour to the singles stars.

But Davis Cup regularly shows that a top-100 singles player generally trumps a doubles specialist. Goffin and Darcis were Belgium’s best option, and with Darcis holding the pair together with some delightful touches at the net, Belgium could easily have won until Darcis faded badly in the fourth set. But a tactical adjustment initiated by Andy proved the Belgians’ undoing.

The Murrays took the first set, but the match seemed to turn when Jamie was broken in the third game of the second. With the Belgians targeting Jamie, Andy had to take a lot of risks to cover for his brother. When Jamie was broken at the start of the third set, the Belgians looked the likelier winners, but at that point Andy started staying back while Jamie was returning, thereby giving his brother a bigger target to aim for and making it harder for the Belgian at the net to hit volley winners.

Combined with the Belgians’ failure to come in after their serves, the effect proved dramatic. It allowed Jamie to push his returns and charge in to the net. As his reflex volleys found their range alongside Andy’s cultured volleys, the visitors wrested the initiative from the hosts, and turned the match back in their favour. There was a flurry of breaks: Jamie, Darcis, Goffin, Jamie again and Darcis again, but thanks to Andy’s service holds the British took the third set.

With Darcis broken in the third game of the fourth, and tiring badly, Jamie’s confidence grew, and he was a more convincing player at the end as the Murrays ran out winners in two hours, 49 minutes. Andy paid tribute to his brother at the end, saying, “I trust Jamie on a doubles court so much, and even if he started slow, I knew he would get it going. He loves playing in big matches. He tends to perform very well on big occasions, and this year in all of the ties, he’s performed extremely well. I trust him when he’s next to me on the court, not just because he’s my brother but because he’s an exceptionally good tennis player.”

Sunday’s singles key is Murray vs. Goffin

Nice words, and no doubt heartfelt to a brother and teammate. Nonetheless, the match strengthens the impression that the British team is Andy Murray plus a couple of helpers, and Murray is likely to seal victory for Great Britain – and make it 11 wins out of 11 for him in Davis Cup this year – when he takes on David Goffin in Sunday’s first reverse singles.

That match is not a foregone conclusion. Goffin can afford to be more relaxed than he was against Kyle Edmund in Friday’s singles, and while he has never taken a set off Murray in two previous meetings, they have yet to play on clay, which is Goffin’s best surface. But Belgium’s problems appear to go beyond the unlikelihood of Goffin beating Murray. Darcis admitted to tiring in the fourth set of the doubles, and while he said he’d be available for a fifth rubber if necessary, he looks out of the running having used up his reserves in the doubles.

Inadvertently, this doubles may have acted as an advertisement for next year’s Olympic doubles tournament. The allure of Olympic medals means the best singles players are often willing to turn out for doubles in the Olympics, indeed it has been known for players to default from the singles if they feel they have a better chance of a medal in doubles. The theory that the Olympics have the best doubles tournament in today’s tennis – because so many top singles players turn out – appears to have been boosted by Saturday’s action at this Davis Cup final.