A week and a half ago, the draw didn’t look so friendly to Andy Murray.  He was expected to play a series of Frenchman for four rounds.  He played Roger-Vasselin in the second round and Michael Llodra in the third round.  The expected player was Gael Monfils in the fourth round, but due to an injury of sorts, Monfils struggled against Mikhail Kukushkin in two sets, then managed to muster enough energy and movement to take two more sets, before losing a critical serve when someone from the crowd tossed an oversized ball during the middle of a point.  The match so wearied Kukushkin that he had to withdraw after two lackluster sets.

The danger player would have been Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  To be fair, Murray actually has an excellent record against the French, but Tsonga would still have been a tougher opponent.  But Tsonga didn’t win.  In the heat, his game went awry as he kept spraying balls a bit long or a bit wide.  He started off fine, winning the first set handily, but then dropping sets 2 and 3 before pulling his game together in sets 4.  Nishikori, however, was the one with the early break in the fifth, and pretty much opted to hold serve and not contest Tsonga’s serve.

Like Kukushkin, Nishikori had played a lot of long matches, and the worry was whether he could play a decent match.  He had one positive.  The weather was going to be cool, not the heatwave of the past two days.

The match was a bit weird.  Andy Murray served poorly, but got to an early break.  While players like Federer pride themselves on how often they hold serve and how few break points they face, Murray prides himself in giving himself break opportunities.  Murray did not look nearly as sharp as he did in previous rounds.  He leaned on his favorite shots: crosscourt forehands and backhands, preferring long backhand exchanges, trying to avoid leaving shots up the middle where Nishikori would hit hard shots to one corner or the other.  Nishikori, for his part, didn’t look too bad.  He was able to play a long rally against Murray where both players were hitting hard.  Lasting over 40 shots, the rally went Murray’s way when Nishikori got off balance and Murray sliced the ball up the line for the win.

Murray found himself in trouble on his own serve quite a bit, but kept digging out of the messes and holding serve.  Conversely, he also found himself getting numerous break points against Nishikori, but unable to close out the break game.  He was always ahead, but could have broken the set wide open in either of the first two sets.  Murray took sets 1 and 2 by the identical score of 6-3.  By the third set, he had run Nishikori around so much that Nishikori was struggling and dropped the set 6-1.

Murray had been working on hitting down the line, but seemed uncomfortable hitting that shot throughout the match, preferring crosscourt shots most of the times.  His serve percentage was particularly low, under 50% most of the times, but despite all that, Nishikori was unable to take full advantage, partly because he was fatigued from previous matches.

Murray admitted as much afterwards.  If he’s going to beat Ferrer or Djokovic, he needs to serve a lot better.  He blamed the wind for making it challenging to serve.  Of the three semifinalists, Murray has looked the weakest, despite the win.  It would have been a different story if he could have consolidate his break chances.  The good news was increased aggression in the second set where he seemed a bit more defensive/cautious in the first set, playing more like he normally does.

The one plus, Murray admitted, was short matches through all his matches.  This was a goal he and Lendl set for the Australian.  Keep matches short and conserve energy for the semis/finals.  Since Murray is going to plays either Djokovic or Ferrer who are likely to play him in a long match, the lack of hours on court are going to help him.  Chris Fowler of ESPN speculated that maybe Ferrer would upset Djokovic given Murray’s luck with the draw breaking his way.  Of course, that would be tough to do in the finals given it’s going to be either Federer or Nadal.