AS ANDY Roddick's quarter-final against Lleyton Hewitt ticked over into a fifth set on Wednesday evening, opinion around Wimbledon was split as to which one Andy Murray would rather play in the semi- finals.
Roddick is more match fit, has a bigger serve, and in the end beat the tenacious Australian, and all three factors might suggest that Murray would rather have avoided him.
But Hewitt, while not yet back to his best following surgery, is a far more
versatile player than the American, one who is able to ask awkward questions about different aspects of an opponent's game.
Nullify one aspect of his, and the Australian can come up with a Plan B. Roddick, by contrast, is one-dimensional.
If you learn to read Roddick's serve and begin to get some returns in, you have a good chance of defeating him.
It is a big if, given the power of that serve, but as the best returner in the game Murray is better placed than anyone to succeed.
Indeed, it is no coincidence that the man from Nebraska was the first elite player of whom the Scot got the measure.
The pair's head-to-head record is now 6-2 in Murray's favour, and he is a strong favourite to make it 7-2 this afternoon.
Interestingly, it will be the first time that Murray has faced someone for a second time at Wimbledon. The then 19-year-old Scot scored a famous 7-6, 6-4, 6-4 third-round win over a third-seeded Roddick on the middle Saturday of the 2006 championships.
All the same, the current No3 seed believes he will have to work hard to stretch his advantage. "I have played well against him, but the thing about playing him is that it is tough," he said. "It can come down to a few points and how you play them kinda determines how the match will go.
"He is a very tough guy to beat especially on this surface because of his serve."
Conventional wisdom has it that the match will come down to the Roddick serve versus the Murray return, but the Scot is prepared for convention to go out of the window.
"A lot of it will come down to how I serve and he returns, because I don't want him to give any opportunities to get ahead in the sets and go a break up," he continued. "Because that is when he plays his best tennis, when he is ahead and he can really go for his serve. Likewise he is going to have to return well to break me because I have been serving well.
"Against Andy it is a bit different because of his serve. If he serves great, he can go into tiebreaks and a little bit of luck here and there can change the match.
"But if I play well and serve well, I know I have a chance of winning, and that is what I will be focusing on."
At the very top of his game, Roddick can be almost possible to beat, but he does not reach that optimal condition very often.
He knows that Murray, like Roger Federer among others, is a more versatile player than him, but he is convinced he will have to trust entirely in Plan A.
"Obviously, I'm not going to get into a match where we're both trying to poke the ball around on the court," he said. "That probably wouldn't work. But you're going to have to (grind it out] at certain times, for sure.
"He doesn't really have a lot of weaknesses – or any, for that matter. He's improved his serve a lot. He returns well.
"I know how hard this game is, so anybody who is near the top of it certainly has my respect. I mean, I know what goes into it and what it takes on a daily basis, so certainly I have a lot of respect for that.
"Andy has been playing great. He's certainly kind of come into his own as a player.
"I'm going to go out and play a match. With my serve I can give myself a chance in any match. I've been in this situation many times.
"I'm not going to predict anything. I'm going to have to play well and hopefully he would probably say the same."
Any doubts about Murray's ability to recover quickly after his epic win against Stanislas Wawrinka were assuaged when he came out on Wednesday and defeated Juan Carlos Ferrero in straight sets.
Given his battle with Hewitt, Roddick is likely to be the more tired of the two.
Such relative fatigue, however, would be unlikely to show itself until the latter stages of a long and gruelling contest. And it is hard to see today's semi-final taking on that shape.
Roddick knows the odds are stacked against him in that kind of match, and so will go for broke today.
If he wins by three tiebreaks in a brutal match with little or nothing to delight the purist, he will be happy.
Such a result is conceivable, but it is more probable that Roddick will win just the one set that way.
Murray should have the edge the rest of the time, and should end the afternoon with a place in the Wimbledon final for the first time.
