James Lawton: Harder challenges lie ahead – but Murray looks ready this time
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Your support makes all the difference.If Andy Murray exceeds all expectations and reaches Sunday's final there is a very good chance his opponent will be Roger Federer.
This may have been an additional encouragement to the man from Dunblane yesterday because Richard Gasquet, who was thoroughly whipped in arguably Murray's most authoritative performance in this or any other Grand Slam tournament, is said to have a backhand that might only be bettered by the one belonging to the Swiss master.
There were certainly times when it announced itself as a weapon of scorching beauty on the Centre Court but fortunately for Murray, the 25-year-old Frenchman plainly finds it a struggle getting hold of all those other virtues owned by the winner of 16 major tournaments.
They are of course the ones of relentless ambition and technical brilliance that have created an upper crust at this tournament which has presented Murray with his career challenge – the one of moving beyond the stage of his development that has taken him to three Grand Slam finals but without clinching evidence he might just be able to go all the way.
Yesterday was never going to provide overwhelming evidence either way but it did show was that Murray has found an impressive degree of composure at a relatively advanced stage of the tournament.
Gasquet trailed glory into the fourth-round match as the free spirit of tennis who has the talent to overwhelm any opponent on any day. He did it in Rome earlier this year when he beat Federer and many believed he threatened Murray's progress more seriously than did the big-serving veteran Ivan Ljubicic, last Friday night.
It turned out to be something of an illusion, except for the sweet quality of that silky, biting backhand – either that or the possibility that the 24-year-old Murray may finally have come of competitive age at the highest level.
Murray's 7-6, 6-3, 6-2 fourth-round win in a little more than two hours is one of those results which brims with promise but has to be sent to the department of future analysis.
This is because the world No 13-ranked Gasquet in the end put in a performance that, if it didn't obscure some of his sumptuous natural gifts, mocked his billing as super-talent whose only professional defect is a certain unwillingness to apply himself to the challenge of battling into the zone currently occupied by the Big Three of Federer, a suddenly injury-bothered Rafa Nadal and a Novak Djokovic who yesterday returned to his most withering form.
Yet if Gasquet splintered into so many pieces after Murray smoothly raised the pressure after winning the first-set tie-break, there was enough evidence that he would indeed have been able to exploit anything that Murray might have offered him.
Murray struggled to plunder much from Gasquet's first-set service game but after proving too strong in the tie-break he produced a near perfect performance.
In the second set he also produced a statement of confidence that said rather more than his much celebrated Dunblane deke – the half-volley played between his legs that has so far baffled two opponents but could go horribly wrong at any moment.
Yesterday he played a drop shot of exquisite timing. It not only stunned the Centre Court, it also told Gasquet, who had played a similar shot a little earlier, that he had examined his armoury and had found little to fear.
Indeed, by the final set Murray was not only playing some shots of breathtaking conviction and touch he was also suggesting that this might be the time when the most talented male British player in 75 years had grasped finally that he really didn't have anything to lose but his caution.
Most pleasing for Murray was the growing certainty of his serve. He saw off Gasquet with a barrage of aces and when each went he seemed to grow by at least an inch.
Tomorrow he faces the bearded Feliciano Lopez, conqueror of Polish qualifier Lukasz Kubot.
Murray has produced, according to some critical opinion, his least passive performance in a Grand Slam. The question is, can he beat something more than a replica of Roger Federer's backhand?
It is perhaps a little early to say but this was certainly not the least encouraging evidence.
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