US Open 2011: A Counterpuncher's Chance

Andy Murray looking like the aggressor in a match is not a sight that you get to see very often. As Murray looked to take the attack to Somdev Devvarman in his first round match in Arthur Ashe stadium yesterday, it looked like he had finally met his counterpunching match. In the first set, Devvarman displayed an astonishing degree of defensive skill which sprang from an incredibly quick pair of legs that he used to sprint all over the court. Oh, how Devvarman sprinted – he ran side-to-side along the baseline to stay close to Murray in the neutral rallies, scrambled well beyond the doubles alleys to reach Murray’s acutely angled shots, galloped to the net to get to Murray’s drop shots, and backpedaled towards the baseline to get a racquet on Murray’s towering lobs. And yet, somehow, Devvarman never looked winded or even slightly bothered by all the work he was being made to do. With Murray not at his sharpest best on the return, Devvarman even managed to hold serve with relative ease in the early stages of the match. After 4 games, Devvarman led 3-1, and ripples of the possibility of a stunning upset began spreading around the court and beyond, even reaching the television sets and heads of people watching thousands of miles away in India.

It didn’t take long for the fairytale bubble to burst. A Murray on the offensive – flattening out his forehand and aiming for the lines with his bullet backhand – does make for a refreshing change of pace, but it simply wasn’t enough against a tireless retriever like Devvarman. Sensing that, and also perhaps realizing that a third consecutive early exit at the US Open would be a uniquely tough situation to explain away, Murray decided to dig in his heels and run even harder than his opponent. Down 1-3 in the tiebreaker, Murray made Devvarman take on, just for a small while, the role of the aggressor. Predictably, Devvarman coughed up a string of errors, and the first set (followed by the match) was in Murray’s bag. The grumpy Scot lives to counterpunch another day, and all’s well with the British world.

Somdev Devvarman

Did Devvarman ever really stand a chance yesterday? If you run through the list of players who have bundled Murray out of the Slams recently, you’ll see a bunch of names possessing hard serves, flat groundstrokes and plenty of attacking weapons. Devvarman, on the other hand, is a player who possesses a barely-passable serve, spinny groundstrokes that often land at the service line, and plenty of defensive options (just about the only impressive bit of offense that Devvarman put on show yesterday was his rock-solid overhead – no lob was good enough to get past him once he found his way to the net). Devvarman is unusually quick around the court, yes, and is armed with exceptionally efficient footwork, but his groundstrokes off both wings lack any kind of weight or pace. He might actually be described as the definition of a counterpuncher. It’s a mark of how well Devvarman used the tools at his disposal that he gave Murray so much trouble in that first set.

Devvarman is 26 years old and is currently ranked in the 60s. Does he have it in him to trouble the guys at the top on a consistent basis? I believe he does, as long as the matchup is favorable to him; he will be considerably more comfortable diffusing the baseline blasts of a Robin Soderling or Juan Martin del Potro than trying to outsmart the likes of Murray or Rafael Nadal. Will he ever reach the top 10? In many ways, Devvarman is like a lesser-experienced version of David Ferrer, and Ferrer has reached as high as No. 4 in the rankings. There’s just one caveat – Ferrer has a far superior serve than that of Devvarman (and even Ferrer is not exactly a serving machine). Unfortunately, that caveat is the single most devastating obstacle in Devvarman’s path. On the ATP tour, there’s simply no place to hide without a decent serve.

That said, Devvarman is still good enough to be a top-50 player, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. I know that if I was ranked 50^th in the world at my job, I wouldn’t want to achieve anything more in my life. A little bit of perspective never hurt anyone, did it?