Berdych advances to Wimbledon semifinals

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Andy Murray needed five sets to see off Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and set up a Wimbledon semi-final showdown against Tomas Berdych.

“That was a really hard, hard match to come through”.

Murray has beaten Berdych in their last four meetings, but before that the Czech led their head-to-head record 6-4.

On a day when Roger Federer escaped from two sets to love down to Marin Cilic, the credentials of the two big hitters remaining in the Wimbledon draw faced the sternest of examinations but now burn brighter than ever before.

“Tsonga is one of the best grass court players in the world and he came up with some unbelievable shots, some unbelievable passing shots on the run”, he added.

He approached Czech-born Lendl to join him after the eight-time grand slam victor split from Murray in 2014, but was knocked back.

“He played extremely well”. He screamed in the match something like, “I am not losing this”, and then he didn’t.

Murray, 29, is bidding for a second Wimbledon and third Grand Slam title, while his Czech rival was runner-up at Wimbledon in 2010.

The second set was a one-sided affair, with Tsonga clearly wounded after his opening set trauma.

Is it frustrating for him to see Lendl in Murray’s corner?

Murray then opened up a 4-2 lead in the fourth set only to lose four games in a row, but crucially he dug in at the start of the decider.

After the tie-break had tilted one way and then the other it reached a glorious conclusion after Tsonga saved a set point at 9-10 with a forehand victor.

After saving break point in the opening game of the fourth, a fan subsequently shouted out “come on Andy, we want to go and watch Wales”. I came back strong on the third and fourth, but I didn’t play well in the fifth. “It was a fantastic match”.

Murray did play well at the end, with a little help from the crowd. Athletes often take such comfort from the familiarity of their routines – Murray uses the same practice court each day, eats the same snack after each match and has one of the same three things, chicken, steak or salmon, for supper each night during the tournament – that even a slight shift can throw out their sense of equilibrium. It all melted together wonderfully.

“I played well against him the last couple of years”, said the Scot.

Andy Murray and sentimental favourite Roger Federer will look to the Centre Court crowd to roar them into the Wimbledon final on Friday.

The crunch moments arrived at the start of the fifth set.

“Besides the matches you play and the practices, everything in between is very important and that seems to work extremely well”. After the second set I thought it was going to go to Murray easily, but obviously things didn’t go to plan. Navratilova’s serve and volley ended up besting the deep, baseline game of Chris Evert in a thrilling match.

“He had to hold on to serve and keep in front because he had not been behind in the whole match”. At 6-6, Murray found himself fighting his first tie-break of the tournament.

Andrew Castle, former British number one: “Andy began to have a bit of negative self-talk at times, but then it was all about his spirit and willpower”.

“I have quite a simple answer for that because, you know, since you are kid and you are brought to the tennis court, you don’t really think about anything else”.