So, where big brother leads, can baby brother follow? Jamie Murray set the standard for the Murray clan at this year’s Wimbledon by reaching his first doubles final; now it is up to Andy in the singles to see if he can match the achievement.
Murray The Elder and John Peers were in inspired form as they swept past Jonathan Erlich and Philipp Petzschner 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 in a smidgeon over two hours. They were fast, they were clever and they were chock full of confidence as they simply got better and better as the sets rolled by. They will need another performance like that if they are to get the better of Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau – who won 13-11 in the fifth against Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea – on Saturday but now anything and everything seems possible.
“It’s a great result for us,” Murray said. “We got off to a slow start, especially on my serve – I was struggling a bit with that at the beginning – and I think Erlich was struggling with his knee, but we’re in our first Wimbledon final.
This is our third year together... A lot of the guys fall out and split up but we stuck at it and we got our reward
“This is our third year together which is quite a long time for a doubles team. A lot of the guys fall out and split up but we stuck at it and we got our reward: we are in the Wimbledon final!”
This is the first time in his career that Murray has been the wise and experienced old head in a doubles partnership. Even when he started out with Eric Butorac almost a decade ago, he was five years younger than his American partner and while they powered up the rankings as a team of equals, Murray was still the rookie in terms of age and experience.
Since then, Murray has gone through many partners with varying degrees of success until in 2013, he teamed up with Peers. The Australian is three years Murray’s junior and may have been a little raw when he first signed up but he soon developed an understanding of how the team should play and how they were going to win. To date they have picked up five trophies but the biggest one of all could be waiting for them on Saturday afternoon.
Murray takes this being the boss business very seriously. His sidekick was serving like a dream, gliding through his service games with little or no resistance. But every time he stepped up to the baseline to welt down another thunderbolt, he would glance at his partner to discover that Murray was giving him instructions. This is quite normal – hand signals delivered from behind the back – and lets the server know what the plan is. “You belt it over there, I’ll nip in over here and Bob’s your uncle”. Only in sign language.
But Murray wanted to be even more specific. There was the signal indicating where Peers should serve, a message greeted with a clipped Aussie “Yep”. That was followed by where Murray was planning to go after that. “Yep”. And then another instruction. And another. Some serves took a while to deliver as Peers reacted to the boss’s directions: “Yep, no, yep, yep” Bang. 15-0. It was complicated but it worked.
On the other side of the net, it was more like the Battle of Wounded Knee. Both Petzschner and Erlich were struggling with injuries, Petzschner arriving with his left knee taped and poor Erlich hobbling around with his right knee swathed in eye-wateringly tight bandages. So tight was the strapping and so painful was his knee that Erlich could not sit down at the change of ends. Running around was painful enough but bending his knee unnecessarily simply for a bit of breather between games? There was no way he dared risk that.
No matter, the German-Israeli partnership were fit enough to take the first set but then could not keep up as Murray and Peers sprinted into the final. Murray was playing to Erlich’s weaknesses and making him run backwards when the Israeli was gritting his teeth to withstand the pain as he tried to move in a straight line forwards while Peers was just leathering winners whenever he got the chance.
If his serve was good throughout, his returning just got better and better the nearer the pair got to that place in the final. And throughout it all, Murray’s lightning reflexes at the net led them home.
But will Jamie talk to Andy about the final or, indeed, about Andy’s forthcoming semi-final with Roger Federer. “No!” came the clear and prompt reply. Jamie was already in a Wimbledon final – it was up to Andy to see if he could follow him.
