Much was said before the tournament about the tough draw faced by Andy Murray in his quest for a gold medal at his home Olympics, but in the end his progress to the medal rounds was more of a stroll than a struggle as he dismissed Spain’s Nicolas Almagro 6-4, 6-1 in 57 minutes.
Almagro, who has never been beyond the third round at Wimbledon, was not the name most people would have picked as "last Spaniard standing", but after the withdrawal of Rafael Nadal and the losses of Fernando Verdasco in the first round and David Ferrer and Feliciano Lopez in the fourth, he was left to carry Spain’s hopes in the singles alone. Murray got the first break at 2-2 after a forehand winner off the back foot and a double fault from Almagro, and from that point on he never really looked back. The Wimbledon finalist served beautifully, striking 15 aces, making 81 percent of first serves and winning 93 percent of points behind that shot, and it became increasingly difficult for Almagro to make any inroads on Murray’s serve. He kept the deficit to one break, but that was really all he could do as Murray played some shots worthy of any tournament’s highlight real — a winner with Almagro serving at 3-5, 40-15 was particularly noteworthy, as a fantastic angled cross-court pickup from Almagro got a better response, Murray reaching the ball when it was no more than two inches off the ground and poking it around the netpost for a winner, before serving the 6-4 set out to love.
Almagro was clearly out of sorts, feeling his right shoulder and grimacing at his support camp. He might have regretted his decision to play the 500 in Hamburg after that shoulder began to bother him in Bastad, but it seemed to pain him particularly on the backhand, thus making it impossible to deploy his biggest weapon. A visit from the trainer between sets didn’t seem to help as Murray broke to love in the first game of the second set with a running cross-court forehand winner, then consolidated to love.
Almagro’s best chance to get back on level terms came at 2-1, when Murray followed two aces with two double faults, but after Murray rescued an awful drop shot by threading a forehand pass up the line to hold the writing was on the wall for the man from Murcia. Struggling to hit through his backhand at all, let alone with any sort of pace or penetration, and rolling in his serves Almagro gave up the double break, then put a weary backhand into the net for the match.
There’s no denying that his opponent was far from his best, but it was still a dominant and confident performance from Murray, especially after going three sets in the previous round. He will face either Jo-Wilfried Tsonga or Novak Djokovic in the semifinals.