Murray Lauds Djokovic Achievement

“What Novak achieved today is something extremely special, and a lot of people would have wanted to have seen that and been a part of that,” said Andy Murray after his four-set loss to Novak Djokovic gave the World No. 1 a career Grand Slam. The pair faced off for the seventh time in a Grand Slam final. “He played extremely well and gave me very few errors.”

Murray, who won their previous meeting on the clay of Rome, played smash-mouth tennis en route to a 6-3 first set win, but simply could not match Djokovic’s consistent excellence as the match progressed.

“The conditions have been challenging for all the players. Very heavy; tough, tough conditions. If you aren’t the one dictating the points, you end up doing quite a bit of running and it’s not easy,” said Murray, shedding light on his choice of tactics in the opening set of the match. “I kept fighting till the end, but I wasn’t able to play my best when I needed to.”

For Murray, just being on the court on the second Sunday is an incredible result. The Brit struggled on the red clay earlier in his career before reaching his first clay-court final in 2015 and beating both Rafael Nadal and Djokovic on the surface this year. Murray was a set from defeat against veteran Radek Stepanek and French underdog Mathias Bourgue in his opening two rounds, before righting the ship and eventually taking out defending champion Stan Wawrinka for his first Roland Garros final berth.

“I think both of us had tough runs to the finals for different reasons. Obviously, I played a lot of long matches at the beginning of the tournament, and then the match with Stan wasn’t that long. The match with Richard [Gasquet] I think was just over three hours,” said Murray, who acknowledged that delays due to rainy weather have been a big factor during the fortnight. “Novak had to play every day, although his matches were more comfortable, so it was a little bit different.

“[It’s] such a rare thing [for Novak’s achievement] to have happened, and obviously the depth in the game just now is strong. Some people may think differently, but the level of tennis is pretty high now and something you probably won’t see for a long, long time. His performances over the last 18 months to two years have been exceptional.”

The 29 year old believes that, beyond the initial disappointment of losing big match against the likes of Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, his presence alongside other members of the Big Four will mean much to him once it’s all said and done.

“The guys I have been around the last few years have made things difficult for me. I have been close-ish to winning all of the Slams now and unfortunately all of them have done it instead.

“But I guess I’ve got a few more years to try and do that. I think, you know, when I finish I will be more proud of my achievements maybe. None of the big events I have won have I done without beating one of those guys or a couple of them.

“So maybe when I finish playing my achievements will mean a little bit more.”

In the meantime, Murray is out for revenge during the upcoming grass-court season.

“I have played some of my best tennis on clay over the past few weeks. Hopefully that translates well onto the grass, which is a surface that comes way, way more naturally to me.

“If [Novak and I] meet on the grass, I’ll try and learn from the last few weeks’ matches and see things I could have done better.”