Andy Murray must wait another year for a chance to reach the Wimbledon final after Rafael Nadal beat him in four sets.
Murray started brilliantly; edging the first set but Nadal kept a champion’s composure and came out fighting in the second. The crucial points came when Murray missed two relatively easy forehands that threw away any chance to dominate the defending champion. Nadal capitalized on Murray’s mistakes and from that point on the outcome of the match seemed relatively determined.
With a 5-7 6-2 6-2 6-4 victory, Nadal goes on to face the man who has commandeered his No.1 ranking, the Serbian Novak Djokovic.
Murray did extremely well to hold his serve in game 11 when Nadal’s returns and movement were excellent. He managed to break Nadal in the next game to forge a perfect start to the semi-final. However, the big turning point on the match came in the fourth game of the second set. Murray was 15-30 up and had two chances to break serve and win the game. He missed both of them and his form started to drop from that point on. Nadal broke his serve in the next game and cruised to take the second set 6-2.
Nadal went on to win 7 games in a row with Murray making 26 unforced errors to Nadal’s six. There was none of the visible anger and shouting we’ve come to expect from the Scot and the crowd seemed to respond to it by sullen applause as the Spaniard took complete control of the match.
There was a flicker of hope in the third set as Murray reached a break point point for the first time since the first set but Nadal was just too strong. That was Murray’s last chance to get back into the game. Serving up his fourth double fault he gave Nadal match point in the fourth set. After a consolatory ace Nadal took the match with an excellent forehand winner.
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