Murray meltdown: US Open exit a mess of Andy's own making

Few players have spent their careers making a mockery of the theory of calmness in the way that Andy Murray has. The Scot has won three slams and two Olympic gold medals yet he has never succeeded in fully taming his infamously manic on-court persona - and has never really looked like he wants to. To this very day, he often switches between screaming at and mocking his support team and himself, even saving some scorn for umpires and his opponents.

The widely-held belief is that the presence of ice king Ivan Lendl in Murray’s support box has helped to cool his fire, that like a junior in front of his imposing coach, when the Czech is around Murray knows he simply cannot talk back and argue. But, on Wednesday, under the watchful eyes of the Czech, Murray suffered one of his worst meltdowns yet.

Cruising up two sets to one and bossing Nishikori around in search of the final, decisive break at 1-1 in the fourth, Murray’s swiped backhand down the line on break point was interrupted by a loud noise that sounded like the bong of a bell. The sound, later revealed to be the result of a speaker malfunction, left the umpire with no choice but to restart the point. It was the correct decision, but Murray responded to the call by castigating the official.

After netting a backhand on the replayed point, Murray walked to the umpire and tapped her chair as he argued again. After losing three successive points, he called on the supervisor to hear his rant, a move he fully knew has never once in the history of professional tennis ended with the supervisor favouring the player over their umpire, and often costs players their concentration.

In news that seems fairly related, mere minutes after snatching the third set and appearing on the edge of dismissing Nishikori, who he had dominated in seven of their eight matches and whose game style matches perfectly with his own, Murray would lose seven games in a row from 1-1 and 30-40 in the fourth set to 0-2 down in the fifth. What seemed destined to end as a vaguely competitive four-setter snowballed into a match which went the distance, and which Murray would lose 1-6 6-4 4-6 6-1 7-5.

Aside from his previous blooper when the Scot managed to be shaken in the middle of a crucial second set tiebreak against Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open in 2013, it’s difficult to think of any moment in recent years where a top player has been so thrown off in a big match by such an irrelevant distraction. It was a moment that required a touch of professionalism from Murray, when most would have queried and momentarily stewed before moving on, but no such professionalism arrived.

“I would say to 4-1 I didn't play a good game after I got out of the change of ends, and then, you know, he held pretty comfortably the next game,” said Murray, opining on the relevance of this event. “But after that, I don't think so. You know, there was a lot of time between then. I had a lot of game points in the 4-1 game; didn't get it.”

Murray’s explanation fell flat. There may have been a lot of time since his initial complaint, but even in his questionable timeline, the Brit’s distraction cost him three games in the middle of a slam quarter-final against one of the most talented players in the world. Whenever Murray finally stopped seething enough to play tennis, he cooled to see a match that had changed beyond measure. In the time immediately after, Nishikori imposed himself inside the baseline, directing traffic in rallies, and it was a spot he refused to move from.

As he leaves New York to eventually prepare for Davis Cup in Scotland, alongside team-mates dripping with confidence, Murray’s loss changes little about what has been the best summer and slam year of his career. At a time when Djokovic continues to be the dominant force, and his supremacy is doubtlessly likely to be resumed in New York, it’s even more to Murray’s credit that, after eight years of battling the big four deep in slams, he took advantage of the Serb’s brief lull to further his career and write himself deeper in the history books with a Wimbledon title and a gold medal.

Through all of this, across the net Nishikori quietly recorded the second biggest win of his career. Since his breakout run to the 2014 US Open final in a year that seemed to position him as the one clutch player beneath the big four who could possibly do some damage against them, it’s difficult to overstate the disappointment he elicited as he morphed into the same shade of the rest of the field beneath. Instead of the potential disruptor, he had become a paragon of consistency who so regularly lost his composure against the players above him.

The Japanese was far from composed throughout the fifth set: he was immediately pegged back from his early break, he led *4-3 40-0 before throwing in a series of unforced errors, a double fault and a heartbreaking missed volley. But despite the nerves that gripped him in his chances to win the match, his silent resilience to respond and recover from countless dire situations endured. Nishikori may have spent much of the match not fully believing in himself to see out the win, but he always believed he was capable of doing so. And with the man across the net caught in a predicament of his own making, he had fair reason.