The title of this post refers to this BBC report on Andy Murray Re: the French Open. The line that caught my attention was this: "The 22-year-old eased to a three-set win over Juan Ignacio Chela" because I watched that match and I don't think eased is a word I'd use. Truly 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 sounds like it was an easy match, but lets not forget that of the 5 games Murray lost 2 were service games - in fact almost every game in the first set and a decent number in the second were quite closely contested. Despite the fact that Murray ended up taking almost every game it doesn't mean they were easy - he definitely fought to win. I think this was largely down to low success rate for Murrays 1st serve - this is going to be a problem as he faces more challenging opponents as the contest progresses. Hopefully Murray has spent his time off today working on getting that 1st serve in more often or he might not make it past his 3rd round record.
This type of story is fairly typical of British media up-playing British interests in the sporting arena. Murray is a damn good Tennis player and he did have some extremely impressive moments yesterday on the way to his win - but it wasn't all great and I think British media has to accept that and reflect it in their reporting. All they're doing is increasing the heavy burden of expectation Murray has been facing since he replaced Tim Henman as British No.1.
So far Murray has been doing a great job of meeting that expectation - maybe even exceeding it this season - but as he improves so does the expectation grow. Can't we just quietly trust in his skills?
Good Luck man, freedoms_stain, out.
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