Australian Open: Andy Murray fights to vintage five-set first round win over Nikoloz Basilashvili

It was just like old times. Long, like old times. Tense, like old times. Teetering on the brink of calamity and triumph almost at once, like old times. At once strangely terrifying, and wildly inspiring, too.

Just like old times. Those old Andy Murray times. And yet, when it was over, the memories remained fond, the experience was still rewarding. Encounters with Murray invariably are. We will miss him when he is gone. We will miss being put through Sir Andy Murray’s special Grand Slam wringer.

Who hasn’t spent an enjoyable afternoon getting rinsed like that? Consumed by painful ecstasy; delighting in exquisite torture. No athlete has ever demanded as much from his public as Murray, but that’s OK because no athlete has been prepared to give more, too.   

He emptied the bucket, again. Ran as if his very existence depended on it, wore down an opponent five years his junior. Do not forget that three years ago, Murray stood forlorn at this tournament as the great and good of his sport read his eulogy. 

He was in pain, he was in tears, and he was discussed, regretfully, in the past tense. His body had surrendered, at last. He needed a new hip, like your nan. For once, he was not going to defy these odds. It was over. He was done.

So Novak Djokovic’s replacement, lucky loser Salvatore Caruso, was not in fact the most surprising name in the Australian Open’s first round schedule. That was Murray. Back from the dead, back as a recent ATP Tour finalist. Back having defied the odds in Sydney against, among others, yesterday’s opponent Nikoloz Basilashvili.

To the Georgian, Murray must resemble one of those creatures in horror movies that cannot be dispatched. He plays tennis like that, too. Basilashvili hits big, from deep. Murray responds with his arsenal of defensive subtlety.

Keeping rallies alive, a deft backhand slice here, a frantic rescue lob there. Try as he might, Basilashvili couldn’t kill him off. Murray would stretch at the court’s outer reaches and back the ball would float.  

It happened so many times, that Basilashvili’s frustration grew and grew. He made so many unforced errors, failed to find a winner from so many strong positions; a smash into the net; and forehand struck long or skewed at the end of another painstaking rally. 

At one stage, he struck a serve with the racquet frame and it flew so far over Murray’s head it was field by an audience member in the second tier. If Murray is agony to watch at times, imagine what he must be like to play against?

At the end of the match he sat in his chair, legs stretched out, exhausted.. His last game in 2019 was an epic battle, too, albeit one that ended in defeat. Despite this, Murray said he would have been happy with that as his farewell. If he liked a heroic loss, then, he must surely have adored this. Same heroic intent, but a different outcome obviously, and against a young opponent who should be blowing old men off the court. 

There is almost effortless power in Basilashvili’s game. He never seemed to be doing the scrapping that kept Murray in contention. At one stage Murray triumphed in a rally that saw him dumped on his backside mid-point. It shouldn’t happen to an old man. And he’s a knight of the realm, for God’s sake.

Yet here he is. Still crazy after all these years, as Paul Simon had it, still talking of aiming for deep progress in a Grand Slam tournament. Recovery permitting, He will certainly fancy his chances next against Taro Daniel of Japan, who at 28 has never progressed beyond the second round of any Grand Slam and who lost to Murray in straight sets the only time they played in the Davis Cup, 2016.    

Murray may also have the crowd on his side if yesterdayTuesday’s appearance at John Cain Arena was any indicator. He was a popular winner and there were even chants of ‘Let’s go, Andy’ at key moments. When the game started it looked to be the biggest crowd for any match at the tournament so far, bigger even than that which greeted Ash Barty on Monday night.

And Murray responds to that. He’s not an audacious entertainer like Nick Kyrgios, whose match followed his, but he does feed off the energy of a crowd, just as they feed off his obvious commitment. 

There were incongruous boos which turned out to be the usual attention-seekers attempting Cristiano Ronaldo ‘Sui’ celebration and which Murray found greatly irritating. Yet mostly, they love him and he loves them. To watch Murray sprint to make a near-impossible return at the net, or to recover from the deep, keeping the ball in play and eventually taming it, making it do his will, is to appreciate an athlete whose life could have been so much more comfortable than he has made it. 

When he spoke after the conclusion of how tough the journey to here has been he knows that, while the auditorium applaud enthusiastically, most inside can never appreciate the physical and mental hurt involved. 

If sometimes, playing tennis seems to pain Murray, how must those long months of recovery have felt? And all to get here, a first round match against the number 22 seed, a player that would have barely detained him Murray at his peak Basilashvili has now lost to Murray twice, in a week.  

He beat him in three sets in Sydney and would have won over the same distance here, too, except Grand Slam matches last five sets. Well, certainly many of Murray’s do. So five sets it was here, again. Five sets and eight minutes shy of four hours which, naturally, included a losing tie-break, and set points, match points that initially went awry.

There were times – the tenth match of the fourth set was the best example – when Murray’s defence was simply astonishing, when he was backed into a corner from which defeat looked the only logical outcome, yet survived and won the point. 

He was never down the entire match, taking the first set in 23 minutes, and the third after a brutal midway point, with the players contesting more than 30 points across two games. It was a war of attrition. ‘I’m so happy,’ said Murray after, sounding for all the world like a man who had received a large backdated tax bill in the post.

He hasn’t won a single Grand Slam match in straight sets since his hip surgery. Some might even come to believe he likes the suffering of it. Murray’s explanation was simpler. 

He said if he’s beating an opponent ranked 20th in the world, then he’s playing tennis at that level, and any match against a player inside the top 50 is going to be tight. Daniel is ranked 120. Should be a breeze then. You’d think that, wouldn’t you?