Hot News: Andy Murray Overcomes Cramping at US Open to Win His First Match

Andy Murray now knows that he can serve at close to half speed and contort himself into pained positions that bear more resemblance to modern dance than modern tennis and still win a match at the United States Open.

There may be some comfort in that. Tennis, after all, is about points, not style points. But what was far from comforting for Murray, once a U.S. Open champion, was that he was cramping and suffering (and muttering) against Robin Haase after just two sets in this age of the men's tennis marathon.

'It's not the worst I have ever felt necessarily, but it's the worst I have ever felt after an hour and a half of a tennis match,' he said after his 6-3, 7-6 (6), 1-6, 7-5 victory.

Opening day was, to be sure, a scorcher at Flushing Meadows: bare, sunscreen-lathered shoulders rubbing up against other bare, sunscreen-lathered shoulders in the vast walkways of the Open, which were soon crowded enough to pass for Roland Garros amid the afternoon rush for the ice cream vendors and the outside courts.

Inside Louis Armstrong Stadium, Judy Murray, Andy's mother and former coach, brandished a fan decorated with the Scottish colors in the second row of the stands.

Smelling salts or a blindfold might have come in handy, too, because there were stretches of this strange-but-true match that had to be tough for a parent to watch.

Three years ago, when Haase and Murray played here in the second round, Haase won the first two sets before Murray recovered to win the next three. This time, the eighth-seeded Murray looked like he had taken the memory and the lesson to heart, winning the first two sets himself.

But that was when the trouble began in earnest: cramps in Murray's legs, cramps in his left side, cramps in his left forearm, cramps just about everywhere it seemed.

'For me it was unexpected, and therefore quite difficult mentally to deal with,' Murray said. 'Sometimes it can happen in one area of your body, but when it starts to kind of go everywhere, you don't know exactly where it's going to creep up next. When you stretch one muscle, something else then cramps, too.'

It also was unexpected because Murray said he had trained particularly hard and well in the lead-up to this tournament. He had felt good enough to declare beforehand that this was the best prepared he had felt coming into a Grand Slam tournament since Wimbledon last year (he won that Wimbledon, putting an end to a 77-year drought for British men in singles).

That was presumably no throwaway statement from a veteran like Murray, by now quite adept at putting the brake on runaway expectations by understating his own chances. 'I got a great training block over in Miami done, so physically I'm where I would want to be,' Murray said on Saturday. 'My body is pain-free, which is good.'

Forty-eight hours later, his body was pain-wracked, which was clearly not good, even if he did manage to hit backhand return winners in mid-cramp, which made for quite an unusual follow-through.

Haase, an attack-minded Dutchman, had problems of his own. He was feeling nauseated and also had been carrying a foot injury.

'I was more busy with myself, and I was struggling myself,' he said of Murray's increasingly apparent problems. 'I tried to play my game, and it didn't bother me what he did or what he felt.'

But Haase certainly was not expecting to win nine games in a row after losing the opening game of the third set.

'It came out of nowhere for me, and I was surprised,' he said.

Haase was also upset, complaining to the chair umpire after being rebuffed in his effort to seek further treatment for his foot on court. 'I've never heard that before that a physio can deny a treatment,' he said. 'We are here at a Grand Slam. What is that? He saw me and then he tells me that a pill is enough. If I ask for treatment, I should get treatment, I think.'

Murray, who appeared to be in considerably more distress, never bothered to call for a trainer.

'I didn't think you were allowed treatment for cramps,' he said. 'I mean, you can get the trainer on and say it's something else, but it was pretty clear what was happening. And at that stage, it was like, well, what does he come on and treat? I mean, my quads, my forearms and my lats. One treatment, I don't think he would have been able to help. You just try to get as much fluid and eat as much as you can at the change of ends.'

Just as importantly, you avoid going to a fifth set. And though Murray surrendered his serve (or what was left of it) to allow Haase to serve for the fourth at 5-3, the Scot then mustered just enough energy, gumption and timely brilliance to break Haas back. This happened with considerable assistance from the clearly nervous Dutchman, who double-faulted on break point.

Murray, playing in what looked like slow motion, still had plenty of work to do. He still had to find a way to hold serve while serving at well under 90 miles an hour. He still had to break Haase again to go up 6-5 and still had to fight off three break points in the final game before Judy Murray and Murray's new coach, the Frenchwoman Amélie Mauresmo, could jump to their feet with relief.

It was an undeniably gutsy, first-round victory, but it was far from a reassuring first-round victory.

'I don't know if it's something I have done in the last few days that's been wrong or not,' Murray said in his trademark baritone drone. 'But I need to try and find out why.'

Post By http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/sports/tennis/andy-murray-overcomes-cramping-at-us-open-to-win-his-first-match.html