INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.—Was it just Thursday when I wrote that the one thing we knew about Andy Murray was that there would be no post-Australian Open swoon for him in 2012? Despite his 6-4, 6-2 opening-round loss to Guillermo Garcia-Lopez—the scores are as boggling as the loss itself—I don’t think Murray swooned. Instead, he fell victim to another, much more common tennis-player’s problem: a hot opponent, an off night, and an inability to win the one point that might have gotten him over the mid-match hump and turned it around. How many times on nights like these have we seen the seed, nearing sure defeat, finally get that key service break, and from there suddenly begin to win as easily as he was losing just a few minutes earlier? Murray had that break point in his grasp seven times, including twice at 0-40, but he couldn’t win it. The match never turned around.
Murray was somber and succinct afterward, as well as, frankly, surprised. “I have to go away and think about what happened,” he said. “Played great in practice, was hitting the ball really well. I felt pretty fresh.”
“I don’t know exactly why,” Murray added with an extra note of exasperation, “because I was playing really, really good tennis the whole of the week and the build-up to it.”
The first and most important reason why is that the 28-year-old Garcia-Lopez, who is currently ranked No. 92 but was inside the Top 25 as recently as 13 months ago and has a win over Rafael Nadal, came out smacking the ball with the relaxed intensity of someone feeling comfortable and with nothing to lose—the dream scenario for any player. The conditions added up in his favor. Murray said the court played as slowly as clay, which is up the Spaniard’s GGL’s alley, and the cool night conditions held the ball up even more.
When Murray did get his chances to get back in the match, Garcia-Lopez never caved to what might have seemed like the inevitable comeback from the world No. 4. He kept smacking the ball. Garcia-Lopez’s one-handed backhand can now officially go on the list of the game’s most underrated shots. It’s always been a great one to watch, but has never been mentioned—or probably even thought about—with those of Wawrinka or Gasquet or Federer. It’s not as flashy or elaborate; nothing about Garcia Lopez, from his strokes to his hair to his demeanor, can be called flashy. But that doesn’t mean his game isn’t versatile. Garcia-Lopez can play at more than one speed, settling for rally balls or cranking his swings up for winners when he wants. He also came up with the most creative shot of the evening, a last-second slice backhand winner that left Murray flat-footed.
“He hardly missed a ball the whole match,” was Murray’s summation of Garcia-Lopez’s immaculate performance. It was a pleasure to watch him keep that level up the whole way.
Still, Murray didn’t play well. He missed his best shots, his return and his backhand; he said that he played with too much slice and spin against a born dirtballer; and he even seemed to get tripped up by his own footwork, a real surprise from one of the game’s most agile and balanced players. In the moments when you would have expected him to gather himself and make a stand, he rushed. Late in the first set, Murray was broken after a series of points that included a missed overhead and two sitter ground strokes sent sailing long.
Murray said he had trouble getting the ball to penetrate through the court. It seemed like he overcompensated for that at certain points and was never able to find his range. More worrying was the way, down break points in the second set, he refused to pull the trigger when he got a mid-court forehand. Twice he settled for pushed drop shots instead. The one shot you can’t lose your confidence on today is the putaway forehand, but it's never been a natural stroke for Murray.
Was this just a one-off, something to shrug off and not worry about? On the one hand, yes, Murray was beaten by Donald Young and Kevin Anderson in opening rounds at Masters events last year, and he came back to reach the semis at each of the next two majors. The trend, then, is that of the Top 4 guys, he’s the most vulnerable to slow starts and first-round defeats. Murray has always had a game that allows his opponents to hit the shots they want to hit, which means that he can allow them to get hot. And if he doesn’t have his core consistency, as he didn’t last night, he can’t blast his way back in. What’s surprising is that after the time spent trying to develop a more imposing forehand and game with Ivan Lendl, Murray would, in his words, settle for rally-ball spin against Garcia-Lopez. Maybe that’s Murray’s early-round issue—when he’s finding his feet in a tournament, he resorts to familiar habits.
Or maybe he just played a hot opponent on the wrong night and couldn’t win the one point to turn it around. In the age of immortals like Federer, Nadal, and soon Djokovic, Murray is still a half-step below. He's still human.