In the first round of this year’s Paris Masters, lucky loser Dominik Koepfer upset Andy Murray, 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (9). He saved an astonishing seven match points, some of them with sequences of play you’d have to see to believe. Naturally, Murray had his teeth in several of these points: at 5-4, 40-30 on up on Koepfer’s serve, he was the aggressor in the rally, but a heavy-handed drop shot cost him. At 6-5 in the tiebreak, with serve, Murray pushed Koepfer wide into the doubles alley with crosscourt forehands, but his forehand down the line wasn’t pacy enough to take advantage of the court position, and Koepfer ended up winning an epic rally with a backhand winner. To Koepfer’s immense credit, he saved five of the seven match points with winners and another with a forcing shot. That is Clutch, capital “c” intended.
The nature of this match makes one wonder where Andy Murray goes from here. Perhaps worst of all, the seven match points that went begging seemed to be the second takeaway from the match, the first being that Murray wasn’t able to efficiently dispose of Koepfer.
Murray’s recent results have been both encouraging and not. He’s given top players all they can handle at times, but he’s only been able to string together consecutive wins twice since Wimbledon, out of ten tournaments played. He’s played a lot of tennis typical of a much higher-ranked player, but without deep runs, his ranking has stubbornly remained low enough for him to require wild cards to get into big tournaments. His recent matches had an air of gradual improvement to them, though — he beat Carlos Alcaraz and Hubert Hurkacz; he took the credibly-accused-of-domestic-violence Alexander Zverev to a tiebreak. But this loss puts a different complexion on things.
Simply put, a player outside their prime needs to be able to win efficiently to be competitive. Heck, even players inside their primes desperately need efficient wins. An efficient win means a win in which a player was not taxed physically. This feeds them confidence, clearly establishes the pecking order between them and the player they beat, and keeps the winner’s body fresh for the more important match to follow.
Murray has not been able to win efficiently for a long time. Koepfer had nothing to lose as a lucky loser and played some great tennis, but it’s not as if Murray had been rolling opponents before this match. In the last month, he’s won just one match in straight sets. And that puts a different complexion on the loss to Koepfer. Yes, the match was a dogfight, and yes, Murray was seven times a point from winning, but considering Murray’s skillset (even now), this is a match he should have won in 90 minutes.
Even if Murray had won this match, it’d have taken him the best part of three hours. That’s one thing in a match where Murray would be a heavy underdog, but against Dominik Koepfer in the first round of a Masters 1000? Not much would be gained even from a win. Murray would have three hours on his legs and a better opponent to face in the next round.
In his prime, Murray could get away with his hesitancy to go down the line with his backhand and boss his opponents around with big forehands. His weak second serve was offset to an extent by his ability to scramble. His speed, first serve, crosscourt backhands, and endurance were so good that he could go toe-to-toe with the best in the world a lot of the time anyway. In 2016, he was the best in the world. He could afford more attritional battles, since he had eternal legs to carry him.
But now, the protracted battles simply aren’t going to cut it if Murray is to climb much in the rankings. He needs easy wins, wins that let him get deep into tournaments where he’s fresh enough to give a better opponent the full extent of his game to deal with. And as of now, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to get any, barring a major uptick in aggression. On set point in the second set of his match today, Murray had Koepfer dead to rights, having pushed him corner to corner a few times with brilliant attacking play. But with a forehand on top of the net and Koepfer way out of position in the deuce corner, Murray strangely pushed a forehand slightly on the ad side that not only was slow enough that Koepfer got to it, but was central enough that the German got a great look at a passing shot and almost made it. He did miss — set to Murray — but it was a close shave.
And at 4-all, 15-all in the deciding set, Murray won one of the points of the year. He committed to hitting fierce angles with his forehand, pushing Koepfer as wide as the ballboy just in front of the sideboards. He made an get off a desperate backhand down the line from Koepfer, then ran down a drop shot and poked it down the line for a winner. It was an incredible display of defense — belief-defying, really, when you consider Murray is 34 and has had hip resurfacing surgery.
The problem is, there are other players on tour who can defend like that, and do it for several matches in a row. Murray’s eternal legs are a thing of the past now, and while his older muscles still have a shocking amount of endurance, it’s just not enough to play the attrition game anymore, despite Murray still being an incredible fighter. In the end, you need a fresh body to fight really effectively. He needs to let loose with his forehand, to crush heavy strokes into the very corners of the court. Misses are inevitable, yes, but the trade-off will be worth it. He can pull the trigger before a point gets too draining; he’ll make some and the ones he misses won’t be at the end of grueling points. He needs to blast some backhands down the line to score some surprise winners.
On the last edition of “Return Error,” I wrote that Murray should end his career only when he and those closest to him deem it the right time, and I stand by that. But throughout his comeback, there has been a sense that a solid ceiling is in play here — maybe top 20, maybe top 30, maybe a quarterfinal appearance at a major if given a good draw.
After today, it might be time to reevaluate how high that ceiling is.