Sunday, June 14, 2009

Andy Murray in Queen's Club final to face James Blake


The year that a British man last won the Queen's Club title, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a meeting with Adolf Hitler waiving his useless piece of paper, and Orson Welles' radio play 'War of the Worlds' was frightening listeners who took it as fact rather than fiction.

If you wander into the members' café at Queen's, and look at the wooden honours board, you have to go all the way back to 1938 for the last British champion, when Bunny Austin won what was then known as the 'British Grass-Court Championships'. Still, Andy Murray is now just one more victory away from emulating a 'Bunny' on the lawns, as he will today appear in his first grass-court final.

Murray's progress into the title-match has been impressively straightforward as he has played superbly and has spent a total of just four and a half hours on centre court for his four straight-set wins at the pre-Wimbledon Aegon Championships, after yesterday's 6-2, 6-4 victory over Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero, a former world No 1 and grand slam champion.

Most at Queen's Club would have imagined that Andy Roddick, who has won this tournament four times, was going to come through the second of the afternoon's semi-finals.

But Roddick did not even last a whole set of his all-American match with James Blake, retiring at 4-4 because of an ankle injury he sustained when, early in the contest, he landed awkwardly at the back of the court, where the grass meets the concrete. Still, it is not felt at this stage that Roddick, twice a beaten finalist at Wimbledon, is out of the grass-court slam.

Murray also did himself some damage on Saturday, by bashing his fist against his strings in annoyance. Although Murray completed the match with blood splattered all over his white shorts, the injury was only minor, and looked more serious than it was.

Blake has been in the final here once before, but he lost that match in 2006 to Australia's Lleyton Hewitt, so there will be a new champion.

So 71 years have passed since a British man was presented with the cup here. And if Murray beats Blake on Sunday afternoon, then that would only lead to further bar-room discussions about whether the 22-year-old has it in him to this summer become the first British champion at Wimbledon since Fred Perry won the Challenge Cup at the All England Club in 1936, some 73 years ago.

Still, Murray is not going to get ahead of himself, and start imagining that, after a good week at Queen's, he is entitled to go deep into the Wimbledon draw, and possibly win the trophy.

This week has so far been a good one, but there is a difference between playing well at Queen's, and playing well in the white heat of grand slam competition at Wimbledon. Murray is the only one of the top three to have played a warm-up tournament, since Rafael Nadal withdrew from Queen's because of sore knees, and Roger Federer pulled out of Halle because of the emotional exhaustion of winning his first French Open title last Sunday. So the world No 3 will have had five competitive matches, and Nadal and Federer won't have had any.

Murray could become the first British winner since someone who is remembered for being the first man to wear shorts at Wimbledon, and whose Bunny nickname came from a character in a comic-strip, 'Pip, Squeak and Wilfred'.

Murray is the first British man in the Queen's final for seven years, as Tim Henman featured in three finals here, losing to Pete Sampras in 1999, and finishing as the runner-up to Hewitt in 2001 and 2002.

Murray's victory over Ferrero was the third match in succession that he did not even face a break point. "It's been a very good week," said Murray. During all of Murray's matches, the crowd have been noticeably quieter than they were last year. It was three years ago that Roger Draper, the chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association, remarked that the crowd at Queen's appeared to consist largely of "City boys and posh totty".

The LTA now own the event, and there seems to be just as many City boys and just as much "posh totty" as there was then, but perhaps the recession has meant that people simply aren't drinking as much Pimm's as they used to. But today could bring an occasion worth marking with a Pimm's or three, as Murray could win a twelfth title, his first tournament on grass, and emulate 'Bunny'.

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