Andy Murray’s a bit of a chameleon.  He seems to play a variety of different ways.  If you saw him play, say, back in 2008, he would play patient ball, standing way behind the baseline, varying his spins and placement.  He didn’t hit harder than anyone else.  Indeed, once he got to number 4, the big difference was that Murray’s oppoents often dictated play against him.  It was Murray’s superior anticipation and defense that let him win matches, but it often meant his matches went longer than it did for, say, Federer or Nadal, who often had more lopsided wins against weaker opponents.

Murray’s critics routinely mentioned how passive Murray would play, and while that style worked against many players, it didn’t work well against the very best.

Murray would change his strategy primarily to play Nadal, where this patient style often put Murray too much on the defense, so he felt he had no choice but to attack Nadal.  Even so, he’d go back to playing his usual style when he didn’t play Nadal.

When Lendl became his coach, the first thing he had Murray work on was alternating shots from sideline to sideline.  Watch the US Open finals against Djokovic.  Murray used this strategy along with a lot of balls played up the middle to combat the wind.  Up until that point, Murray had been what I call a “strongly crosscourt” player.  Murray prefers to hit crosscourt on both sides far more than he loves to hit down the line.

Indeed, this is the main difference between Murray and Djokovic.  Djokovic, when push comes to shove, loves to hit that down the line shot.  He can hit it efficiently off both sides if he needs to win a point.  Interestingly enough, it was Lendl’s favorite shot as well.  Lendl loved the down-the-line shot and frequently passed down-the-line.  People who watch Murray know that he loves to pass crosscourt, especially if he’s not pushed a lot on the run.  Federer knew this too and sliced crosscourt and then leaned crosscourt knowing, under pressure, Murray still loves to hit crosscourt and doesn’t trust his down-the-line shot.

Lendl wants Murray to play closer to the baseline, and use the power that he has.  Murray hits as hard as anyone on tour.  He just prefers not to play this way most of the time.  And because he doesn’t, it creates some stress when he makes himself play this way.  Lendl would like Murray to move the ball around the court forcing his opponents to run.  This is the style that, say, Nishikori plays now, and the one that Davydenko, when he was ranked much higher, played.  But it’s not something Murray likes to do.  He likes playing lazy rallies where they exchange shots, but otherwise, where Murray isn’t pressing his opponents.

Ever since about Wimbledon, Murray’s strategy to play Federer is to outhit him.  It worked well at the Olympics because Federer struggled to get out of his semifinal match against del Potro. Federer played really patient ball against Delpo and never got into the rhythm of hitting hard, which he did when he played Djokovic at Wimbledon.  I credit Fed’s win at Wimbledon with him finding his rhythm playing Djokovic, and I credit Murray winning the Olympic gold when Fed couldn’t find good rhythm playing del Potro.

Because of the long match and lack of rhythm, the power approach caused Federer to run hard, and when he’s not on top of his game, that is, on top of his movement, Federer shanks shots, and that’s pretty much what he did in that match.

However, when Federer is moderately healthy, he wants to play power tennis.  When del Potro beat Federer, he was able to do so by blending patience with power.  Everyone says that Murray is a consistent player, and he is, but he lacks the spin of Ferrer, and, for my money, del Potro is a more patient player, and yet better able to increase his pace than Murray.

Murray found himself playing an in-form Federer, and yet it was hard for Murray to keep up with Fed’s pace.  He started to make more errors, then wanted to play a bit more conservative.  To be fair, Fed added an interesting wrinkle to this match by slicing a lot more on his backhand.  He may have done so because the surface takes to slice very well.  Fed also took advantage of Murray’s preference to his crosscourt on passing shots, especially on the backhand.

Murray is also trying to pressure an opponent’s backhand using the inside-out forehand.  This is a popular strategy used by many players, most notably, David Ferrer.  The problem with it being so popular is that Federer often sees this strategy.  Rather than defend it with a topspin shot, he decided to defend it with the slice.

When Murray lost the first set, he was frustrated, and that frustration translate to missing a lot more shots, as well as Federer starting to simply gain confidence hitting out.  When Federer gets in this mood, it’s pretty hard to stop him.  Murray may need to take a page out of del Potro’s playbook, trying to blend patient play with power play.  It’s not a problem for Murray to hit hard, but he has to get the ball in more often.  It suits players like Soderling (remember him?) who wants to club the ball, but Murray, who hits the ball pretty flat, struggles with this.  By contrast, Djokovic spins the ball a lot more, so he has more margin for safety, and better control of where he hits.

Just when the tennis media was ready to write off Federer and anoint the new Djokovic-Murray rivalry, Federer shows that he can still play this game.