The match so far:

The consistent, and perhaps underrated russian started off right at the peak of his game, dominating the rallies with his flat hitting, forcing Murray from side to side before crunching a winner into the space. Throughout the first set Murray was passive, Davydenko in total control, never troubled by Murray's groundstrokes that lacked depth, pace and even variety of spins. Although Davydenko's serve is modest, his high first serve percentage allowed him to be the aggressor from the start as Andy was reluctant to do much more than get the ball into play, and any poor returns landing short were dismissed for winners by the sixth seed. Just a single break point opportunity for the Scot in the opening set and that soon disappeared as Davydenko came up with a good first serve setting up a forehand winner.

Into the second set Murray slowly started to become competitive in Davydenko's service games as the russian's level dropped, achieving the break when Davydenko missed too many first serves, making errors on decent, if not particulary threatening returns of his second serve. A rare good service game allowed Andy to achieve a 3-1 lead and despite never looking anywhere near his best, and twice being somewhat fortunate to hold serve, Murray got to 5-3 only for Davydenko to hold easily, leaving Andy to serve for the set. At which point he came up with an abysmal game missing four out of five first serves, and handing Davydenko the first two points with a weak smash into the net and a wild forehand error. To his credit Davydenko made the most of this opportunity with aggressive play producing a couple of winners, one a superb angled backhand as he levelled at 5-5.

Despite three first serves Davydenko managed to lose his serve to love as Murray came up with a great lob that Davydenko put into the net, and a soft passing shot that forced Davydenko to attempt a low volley that he netted. Second time around Murray was far more convincing as he served out the set to love 7-5. Then in a long game full of double faults and needless errors Davydenko eventually succeeded in handing Murray an early break at the start of the third set. At 2-0 30-40 2nd serve Murray looked in complete control of a match in which he'd done little more than keep the ball in play. By now his opponent was struggling with even the most basic shots, producing so many errors that Andy's passive play was more than enough. But a simple backhand went long when Andy was aiming for nothing more than to keep the ball in play and the match started to run away from a fuming Murray.

With the double break there for the taking, Andy was furious with himself and despite reaching 30-0, this annoyance with his own performance stayed with him as he missed four first serves, Davydenko came up with a couple of winners and the score was level at 2-2. Another chance to break, another backhand long, this time a more aggressive shot that would have been a winner had it found its target. Andy continued to self-destruct as Davydenko broke then held on comfortably to take the third set 6-3. Just 41% of first serves in play for Murray in a set that should have been his had he managed to play even remotely competent tennis.

Andy was very fortunate that the rain came because he was in meltdown, starting to look exhausted and unable to hit any aggressive shot inside the court. But the match isn't over yet and unless Davydenko can reproduce the form of the first set, Andy will at least have a chance of victory that he probably doesn't deserve given his performance has been poor on so many different levels: tactically they haven't learnt from the first meeting between the players, the serving has been awful with the exception of a few aces, return of serve has been passive, almost no trademark Murray shots; the player that has been making headlines for the last few weeks simply hasn't turned up.

A quick look at the stats shows Murray winning a slightly higher percentage of points on first serve, and a similar advantage on second, but he's serving at 45% while Davydenko is managing 68%. Davydenko has taken 6 of 10 break point opportunities while Andy has 3 from 9 and those were gifts from his opponent rather than winners from Murray. He's going to need to improve in every department when play resumes. And tactically you have to wonder what they were thinking when they came up with this game plan because Murray was doing so much running chasing down shots that even if he'd taken the third set, his legs might have gone before the end of the fourth set, nevermind the fifth.

Madeline wrote:

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Thanks, Kundalini, you have confirmed my own impressions.

I am very depressed now!

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Why?

Unlike the match against Tipsarevic at Queens (which also had a rain delay), Murray can work out what he needs to do to change the match in favour with a coach = Brad Gilbert (tactically amazing according to Murray himself).

So I am glad about rain delay and expect different Murray afterwards

Keith wrote:

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Just checked US Open radio, they are saying it's further play in the afternoon session is "in doubt".

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