!90442910 by
by Pete Bodo
Long before Andy Murray and Marin Cilic took the court to haggle over a berth in the US Open quarterfinals, I had an inkling that it would be a different, downbeat kind of day. It's often like that on the Tuesday after Labor Day - the festive atmosphere of the three-day weekend and its accompanying, devil-may-care tumult is gone. The electricity is reduced to a low, steady hm. Was it just yesterday that Melanie Oudin sparked and sizzled in Arthur Ashe stadium, driving the fans, and a nationwide television audience, in a frenzy?
But Labor Day is always followed by laborious Tuesday; the day when most everyone digs out the tie and loafers and schlepps back to work; the day when even a new backpack and pencil box can't get a kid fired up for another school year; the day when the happy brigades celebrating the final, hedonistic fling of summer go flip-flopping back to reality, and the deflating reminder that there's business to be addressed.
That Tuesday feeling washed over me as Asad Raza and I made our way into the USTABJKNTC under flat gray skies, and in the grip of energy-sapping humidity. The facility was quiet; fans drifted in by the bunch, spread out, went to get a Philly cheese steak or Pastrami sandwich at concessions where the lines were suddenly unexpectedly short. Oh, there were plenty of people present, or on their way. But everyone knew it was Tuesday, the "off day" when the tournament seems to pause to take a deep breath before embarking on the high-stakes, serious if not coruscating drive to the final weekend.
On the way, we talked about Murray, and Asad volunteered that he wasn't sure Murray was Grand-Slam capable; perhaps he's just a Masters Series gunslinger. I thought the assessment unduly harsh. As I sat down in Arthur Ashe stadium I wondered where I'd get my second week motivation; what if Murray wins a so-so four-setter, will I still find something to write about? Most of the lesser lights and intriguing journeymen and women were gone, their summer dreams drifting away like the last wisps of smoke at Monday's barbecue.
The match started languidly, Cilic and Murray probing each other, waiting, like us, for something to happen. Murray is put together a little differently from most of his peers, the operative adjective being "little." He's gangly, yet his legs are relatively short and thick, his back long. This keep his center of gravity low, for a man of 6-3, while allowing him to get plenty of torsional ooomph! into his shots, particularly his backhand. No matter what you dress him in, Murray never looks fresh out of the package; his genus is jocko homo. When the other guy hits a nice winner, he still can't resist greeting it with an audible "Yup," rather than a snarl and murderous intentions.
Cilic, by contrast, cut a pristine, almost prissy, figure, in a smart, predominantly white shirt, and crisp and neatly pressed shorts. He's a little like his countryman Goran Ivanisevic. He's got a small head and dark hair, and he's lean, long and sinewy. He's not as expressive (who is?) as was Ivanisevic, and he lacks the flaky bits that so endeared Goran to the multitides. The up-side in this equation is that his game is tighter, crisper and altogether more disciplined than Goran's every was. But I'll bet there are time when Cilic wished he could cozy up to that service notch and blaze a swerving rocket, a la, Goran, even if the price was shanking a few more backhands into the cheap seats. Goran's failures always made his triumphs look more remarkable.
The "something" we were waiting for happened in the sixth game, with Cilic serving. He fell behind 30-40, an unpleasant position to navigate when you're playing the best hard-court performer after Roger Federer. But Murray flubbed a service return. He won the next point, but then drove a cross-court forehand well wide, and Cilic ultimately held. That second break point was telling; it was a desultory effort from a guy who specializes in jerking his opponents around the court and teasing out errors born of an opponent's eagerness to get a point over and done.
Things went quiet again, until the 10th game of the sets, with Cilic serving at 4-5. He fell behind 15-40, but wiped away the first set point with an ace, and he got a gift from Murray on the second - an ugly backhand that Murray drilled into the bottom of the net after a brief rally. This second escape was critical, for in the next game Murray double-faulted for 0-40, won the next point, but smacked a forehand off the let-cord during an otherwise inocuous rally to give up the break. Cilic held to win the set and that, in effect, was the end of the road for Murray. Cilic broke him in the first game of the second set and soon ran away with it.
"The two set points (10th game), that was the turning point for sure," Cilic said later. "It was a big relief for me. After that, I was not thinking so much of myself." It was a nice way to put it, given that until today Cilic spent a fair amount of time brooding over his inability to hurdle the fourth round in five Grand Slam events.
If you're looking for a key other than form of the day, the best I have to offer is that Cilic took the bait that Murray likes to offer. He played from inside the baseline, and maintained a forcing, aggressive mentality for the entire match. Murray, as usual, hung back, presumably eager to counter-punch. But Murray's strategy was ineffective because of his general sluggishness.
There will be great weeping and gnashing of teeth among my British friends this afternoon, for, with all due credit to Cilic, Murray played an atrocious match. The stats, in this case, do tell the story: Murray hit an anemic 13 winners and made a whopping 29 unforced errors. He tagged one forehand winner - in the entire match. There was much speculation about a wrist injury, and that's neither here nor there. But note that Murray Cilic posted a 58 per cent success-rate on second serves, to accompany his gaudy 79 per cent on first serves. If you ask me, though, Murray was in the grip of that Tuesday feeling, which, like mold, is all pervasive and potentially lethal.
"I started well," Murray explained later. "But when I lost the first set and went behind, instead of sticking to my game plan (which included taking advantage of second-serve returning opportunities, and engaging Cilic in long rallies), I started making silly mistakes, hitting silly shots. I let the match get away from me. Sometimes it happens. So many times this year, I found ways to get back into a match, today I just didn't have it in me to do it. I just played bad tennis, whereas guys had to play great tennis to beat me in the last three Slams. I felt a little flat."
One pleasant side effect of Cilic's breakthrough (He called the fourth-round his "blockade") is that it reflects nicely on Bob Brett, one of the finest - and least well-known - coaches in the game. Reflecting on his close relationship with Ivanisevic, Cilic said: "In 2002-3, he (Goran) was staying in Zagreb and practicing all the time with me when he was there. He connected me with his ex-coach, Bob Brett, which I am here with. He was a great help, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get in a connection with Bob."
Chris Clarey followed up, asking, What makes Bob a great coach, do you think?
!90442454 Cilic answered: "I mean, he coached great players (Andres Gomez, Boris Becker, and Ivanisevic among them). He has a lot of experience, and he brought me this knowledge that helps me to understand much easier some things. If I would be with somebody else who is not that experienced on Grand Slams level and top level, it would take me maybe a year or two more to get some things out of it. So I think I'm learning quickly. And as my results show on the Grand Slams, it works pretty good. He knows a lot about tennis - and other things, too, so... "
I've written quite a bit in the past about Brett, with whom I'm friendly. Among all the coaches out there, he's the hardest to find after a match because he shuns the limelight. But a couple of guys had tracked him down to the Player's Garden after the match, and I joined them. Bob was in a Tuesday kind of way himself; he seemed a little world-weary, probably because he knew he couldn't put into simple words and ideas what he was thinking. More than any other coach, Brett knows that success isn't entirely about first-serve percentages, improved fitness, or attacking the cross-court ball. No coach is more attuned to the emotional and mental fluctuations that a player needs to recognize, address, and master on his way to completion.
"This is New York," he was saying, knowning how insufficient that sounded."Everybody has to play well in New York. Look, you just keep chipping away, doing the little things, trying to improve. They (players) all go through ups and downs, and you try to manage that - teach them to be patient."
Brett was thinking of Cilic's youth; at 20, Cilic is just five days older than the youngest guy in the Top 20 - the man he plays next, Juan Martin Del Potro. "It's so important that they have that time to develop, because as soon as there's pressure, pressure to do everything yesterday, it's easy to lose them. It's a struggle, to keep that balance in their development. it was just a great performance today, but in two days he has to go out and play again, seeing what he can do against another guy who's at the same level and age."
I wondered if Brett felt, coming into the tournament, that Cilic was capable of making a big statement, perhaps even winning the title. He said, "I've been coming to this tournament for 30 years, and you never know. I had that experience, that guy who was down two-sets-to-love and two match points - and he ended up winning the event (Becker). You just don't know. All I know is that Marin is playing well, and that's really what it's all about. He's getting better with every match - coming back from two sets down (against Jesse Levine) helped him, and today he was able to put some things together today that weren't there before this match."
Those things, I suspect, had to do with Cilic making all the parts in his big frame function in smooth, co-ordinated fashion.
Brett said that physical maturity was as important a component as mental maturity, especially for a player as big and rangy as Cilic. "It's easier to put together a guy who's 5-10. A guy who's 6-6, that's tough. There are so many pieces of the game. It's not as easy as it may look for some of these big athletes. It takes more time, and time brings pressures. But Marin is always working hard - he suffers. He suffers with the work he puts in, and he suffers with the results. Sure I know everybody suffers. But the important thing to me is that Marin is better than he was a year ago. So he's not suffering needlessly."
Brett doesn't like to tip his hand when it comes to the nuts and bolts of coaching; you won't find a more tight-lipped man in any locker room. One reporter tried to dig something out of him, asking what they had "focused' on when it came to Murray's game.
"We focused on the court, and on being in shape," Brett said with a sly grin. "And to make sure the coach didn't make a mistake."
With that, he begged off, saying he had to run. He's microphone shy, but I'll probably catch up with him for one of our off-the-record visits before this week is out.
Brett knows that more mistakes will be made. Cilic is, after all, only 20. But the coach specializes in works-in-progress, even the ones that never were completed to his satisfaction, like Ivanisevic. In Cilic, Brett has better clay with which to work, at least in terms of a willing pupil. Brett never did get over his inability to get Ivanisevic over the maturity hump before they parted ways (well before Ivanisevic won that magical Wimbledon title), and it says something about both men that it did not prevent them from enjoying a long and fruitful friendship. Now he's got a less complicated Croatian; perhaps with him, he can achieve some kind of closure.
Murray may have fallen prey to that Tuesday feeling, but perhaps the day Cilic is thinking about is Sunday. Not necessarily this one, but there are lots of Sundays in a career.