It had not started well for Her Majesty’s Centre Court ambassador, the tennis year 2018 at the other end of the world. The first Australian Open ball had not yet been played, as superstar Andy Murray had already declared his injury-related relinquishment, then he immediately applied himself for a hip operation under the knife and announced that he would be ready for new large-scale operations in June.
And then, in the second round of the tournament, top ten player Johanna Contacts bid farewell to the Grand Slam party in Melbourne with a crashing defeat against US girl Bernarda Pera. But a lonely fighter represented the interests of the United Kingdom in a surprising and gripping manner, and the underdog confidently drew his circle in the National Tennis Center – nervous, hard-nosed, courageous, determined.
And now, on the ninth day of the Australian Open, he was still there: Kyle Edmund, 23 years old, a new semi-finalist, proudly the last British Mohawk in the first major competition of the season. Nothing less than the biggest coup of his rather inconspicuous career so far, he, the number 49 of the ATP pecking order, succeeded on one of the big stages, the advance into the exquisite round of the last four with a highly deserved 6:4,3:6,6:3,6:4 victory over the world champion and secret favourite Grigor Dimitrov.
And there’s more to Edmund than that, because in the semi-final he is now facing Marin Cilic, who in the duel with Rafael Nadal benefited from the injury-related defeat of the Mallorcan matador, with a score of 3:6,6:3,6:7,6:2 and 2:0 “Wow”, it escaped in the Grand Slam turbulences there via Twitter Murray.
Like many tennis fans on the island, Murray had spent the night watching Edmund’s ultimate moment of glory. And Edmund himself, in this memorable moment, felt a bit like Murray himself:”In the last few days and now, I only realize what it means to be Andy Murray – with all this attention,”said the shy professional, who is regarded as a rather introverted contemporary and does not like to be in the limelight.
“He prefers to let his bat speak for itself,”said old master Tim Henman, who was on site in Melbourne as an eyewitness. Edmund, the quiet rookie type, was now only the sixth Briton ever to reach a Grand Slam semi-final in the pro era – after Roger Taylor, John Lloyd, Greg Rusedski, Henman and Murray.
With Edmund’s coup, the Australian Open once again lived up to its reputation as a Grand Slam bag of wonder. None of the four major tournaments produced so reliably sensational actors, debutants in advanced rounds of competition and even premiere champions. Outsiders, front-runners – it has always been a motto of the Majors Down Under, where players who won nowhere else and never again, such as the Czech Petr Korda or the Swede Thomas Johansson, won.
“It’s as if you’re going to compete in a stand-up Formula 1 race of 300 kilometres per hour,” said Pat Cash, the 1987 Australian Wimbledon champion Pat Cash, about the tournament of caprioles,”this is pure madness, it has to do with the catapult start into the season, the short preparation and the effort to climb one of the four Grand Slam summits at once.
Even for one such as Roger Federer, the most experienced Grand Slam artist of all, this has always been a “massive challenge”:”This tournament is one of the most complex trials ever in tennis,” Edmund is not the only one who has been astounded by the ongoing festivities at the Grand Slam Theatre on the Yarra River.
On Wednesday night, South Korean Hyeon Chung and American Tennys Sandgren fought for a place among the last four and also a possible date with Maestro Federer. For both, the presence deep in the second week was an absolute novelty, at the same time also a sign of respect and a possible impulse for further advancement in the scene.
The Australian Open as a career accelerator – that is also possible. And could also apply to one like Elise Mertens, the next young hope from the wonderful tennis country of Belgium. Mertens handled the Ukrainian title candidate Elina Svitolina on Tuesday and is now in the semi-finals.
In Andy Murray’s slipstream, Edmund had secretly punched his way into the top 100. But when the Scotsman had to pause for months last year because of his hip problems, the focus was on the 23-year-old British number 2.
With an unwelcome effect, at least initially. He lost too many games too few as a new hope bearers, and the pressure of expectation paralyzed his work:”He didn’t go out to win games any more. But not to lose them,”says Fredrik Rosengren, a Swedish coach veteran who hired Edmund at the end of 2017.
Rosengren is no stranger to the scene, he has already ranked Robin Söderling or Magnus Norman among the top 5. Edmund has a “great future” ahead of him, Rosengren said on Tuesday. But maybe a very big chance in Melbourne.