Watching the Italian Open in Rome last week, I observed Djokovic's faltering progress towards the final. The Serb is so good that, like Bjorn Borg, he can win tournaments without ever producing his best tennis. But I also noticed Andy Murray forging through the field with a confidence he hasn't displayed since he won Wimbledon in 2013. And this on some of the slowest clay in Europe. British players cannot play on clay, the tradition goes. True, Virginia Wade won in Italy in 1971, and Sue Barker went one better, winning in Paris in 1977. But no British man since the thirties has been able to break through on the red stuff.
Yet on Sunday, just before the final began, I turned to my wife and said: "I'm thinking, I wouldn't rule out Andy pulling this off." Seasoned tennis watcher that she is, she refrained from comment. From the outset we saw the Djokovic we had been seeing all week; "crabby" (I use Annabel Croft's word), blowing hot and cold, while Andy maintained a focus so fierce an atom bomb could have gone off over the Tiber and he wouldn't even have noticed. 6-2 went the first set, and on to the next, which he closed out at 6-4 with a championship point so amazing (after a prolonged rally he put away one of Djoki's drop shots from such a wide position he virtually swept it out of the lap of an astonished spectator in the front row) I cite it as the greatest championship point ever played.
Keep it up Andy. You're number two in the world again, and I know that isn't good enough for you. You want to be Numero Uno and you know what? I think you can do it. No need to be afraid of the Serbian top gun any more. You can take him, and not just once, but again and again.
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