Gilles Simon knows that they way he’s likely to win is to grind out long points.   He’s quick, he’s steady, and occasionally, he can hit a hard shot.  It’s possible to overpower Simon, which seems to be the right way to play him, but as David Ferrer found out, power can lead to errors.  It’s amazing for a guy to hit 70 unforced errors and still be in the match, but that’s what David Ferrer did.  That match went over 3 hours, and even Gilles Simon, as fit as he is, has to wear down after yet another long match.

Meanwhile, Andy Murray has yet to drop a set.  He beat Bogomolov in the last round and David Nalbandian in the previous round.

One might imagine Gilles Simon could play Murray close.  Murray tends to push the ball himself.  However, Murray, despite all his pusher qualities, doesn’t rely so heavily on opponent errors like Simon does.  Simon rarely goes on the offense, which becomes surprising when he does power a tough shot, often when he is down.  Murray, on the other hand, has a bit of power on both sides, and so he can go for bigger shots.  These were changes added to his game to handle players like Nadal.

Murray also does three other things very well that help him compete against the best.  He’s among the top three returners in the world.  He takes the ball early.  Although Simon had the most aces of all players in the quarterfinals, he’s still not known as a big server, especially on second serve.  Murray was able to take most returns at the baseline or inside the baseline.  Finally, Murray has great touch using drop shots as adeptly as anyone.

Even with all these tools, Simon still drew Murray into long rallies, and it amused Murray to no end.  To Simon’s chagrin, Murray was in fine form and was getting Simon in deep trouble in nearly all his service games.  Some of it was Simon just uncharacteristically missing shots, and some of it was Murray making aggressive plays.

Murray’s strategy seemed to be hitting shots up the line, or getting a good angle on his forehand.  By the time Murray won the first set, he started employing drop shots.  In the middle of the second set, Murray won an entire game almost by drop shots.  While Simon’s side-to-side movement and anticipation are very good, his forward movement seemed to be lacking.

Simon was able to hold his own serve at 5-3, but Murray did a good job closing out the match and hitting yet another dropper on match point.

Final score: 6-3, 6-3.

Mardy Fish and Rafael Nadal are out on court now for the second quarters of the day.