In all the excitement and euphoria of Andy Murray’s Wimbledon victory – in the UK, at least – one thing has hardly been mentioned: how strange a match it was.
For a 3-setter without any tiebreaks, it was as close and as tight as possible. But yet it didn’t follow the usual pattern of tight games, with each player holding serve until one blinks or a tiebreak ensues.
Instead of the “I hold, you hold” rhythm of most matches, the final instead went in hot streaks. Murray just got more of them than Djokovic.
In fact, looking at the chart below which shows the games won in the match as a descending ladder, there was only one brief period of the game (at the end of the first and start of the second sets) where both men held serve regularly.
You can see that Murray only won two games in isolation (ie sandwiched by Djokovic games). During the rest of the match, he won games in streaks of 2, 3, 3, 5 and 4.
Perhaps it was the heat, or the occasion. Whatever, it’s certainly history.
