The real turning point in Andy Murray’s win over Tomas Berdych

A lot was made about the changeover after the 76-minute, 7-6 first set Tomas Berdych and Andy Murray played in their Australian Open semifinal. Berdych, who won the tiebreaker 8-6, said something to Murray as they crossed paths.

“Good play Tomas” is what Berdych contends he said while discussing the exchange with chair umpire Pascal Maria, as shown in the video below:

If Berdych talked the talk, Murray went on to walk the walk. He won the next seven games and three sets in a 6-7 (6), 6-0, 6-3, 7-5 victory that brings him to the Australian Open final for the fourth time (he’s never won the tournament). When Murray was asked about the changeover after the match, he didn’t take the bait about it being a turning point:

“I don’t know exactly what he said, but he said something,” he told ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi. “There was some tension on the court, definitely, at the beginning. I don’t know if that was a contributing factor or not.”

Whether or not you think a mountain was made of a molehill, the true turning point didn’t take place until the third set. After digesting a second-set bagel, Berdych regrouped and held his first two service games. He then took a 40-0 lead on serve, seemingly halfway to six games.

Then: Double fault, double fault, error.

You just knew Berdych would pay for such lackadaisical play. At deuce, Murray cracked a return winner, though Berdych saved the break point with a forehand that singed the line on review. But that only delayed the inevitable. When Murray earned his second break point of the game, he fired a forehand down the line to end a rally which he controlled. He now controlled the set, at 4-2, and the match.

Berdych’s serving struggles in that game were a microcosm of this match as a whole. One of the biggest servers in the sport, the Czech was woeful after the first set, never landing more than 52 percent of his first serves in (he finished at 59 percent overall, making 75 of 127 first-serve attempts).

He also won only 50 percent of his second-serve points, a statistic greatly impacted by Murray’s returning prowess. The two-time Grand Slam champion is second only to Novak Djokovic (and barely, if that) in getting serves back, and he tormented Berdych throughout this semifinal, forcing him to play more rallies than he typically would. In the fourth set, there was a stretch of three Berdych service games in which he held from a 30-30 position or worse. He deserved credit for pulling them out, but there was an unmistakable sense that Murray would eventually break through.

That finally happened at 5-5, when Berdych threw in one of his six double faults to trail 15-40. An unforced error essentially sealed his fate, but Murray pounded the nails in his coffin with a final love hold. The Scot was superb on serve all day, broken only once and offering Berdych just three break-point chances.

But the most surprising numbers of all may have been the ace counts: Murray 15, Berdych 5. None of those untouched serves were turning points on their own, but they are statistics that certainly make you turn your head.