Murray wins first Grand Slam

It had been a long time coming for Andy Murray - four years since his first Grand Slam final.  In that time, the Brit had lost four Grand Slam finals while only ever managing to take a set.  This time around, Murray got the 76 year-old monkey off his back by winning his very first major title over Novak Djokovic in 5 grueling sets.

Murray won the first set in a whopping 86 minutes, when he finally converted on his sixth set point in a tiebreak that ended with the score 12-10.  He took a surprising 4-0 lead in the second set before the cagey Djokovic brought it back even, only for Andy to wrench back control by taking the set 7-5.

Djokovic brought the match back even at two sets apiece by playing two relatively clean sets of tennis where he wasn't broken.  Murray was trying to not become the first man since 1949 to blow a two sets to love lead in the final of the US Open.

In the decider, Murray played the better tennis and held a two break lead before it was cut down to one.  He once again regained the double break lead and that was to be enough, with Djokovic struggling physically, his legs cramping up at the most inopportune time.  So Andy served for the match at 5-2, and on his third match point, he converted.  He had finally made history.

The match lasted minutes shy of five hours, and that, along with Murray winning, made it a memorable event.  But from a pure tennis perspective, it was a pretty bad match in tough, windy conditions.  Djokovic hit 65 errors to only 40 winners, and Murray hit 56 errors to only 31 winners.  Remember, this was a match that lasted nearly five hours.  In the 315 points played, there were a total of 71 winners hit to 116 errors.

This year is the first year since 2003 where there have been four different Grand Slam champions.  This year, it was Djokovic in Australia, Nadal at Roland Garros, Federer at Wimbledon and now, Murray in New York.

Now that Murray finally has a Slam under his belt, it is unclear whether there will be more or less pressure on him.  The pressure of winning the first one is over, but now, surely, he will be expected to win even more Slams and challenge Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic even more stoutly in 2013.  Now, those big upset losses in Masters events (like the one he suffered to Garcia-Lopez in Indian Wells) will come under more scrutiny.  And as if the scrutiny wasn't already high for him without a Slam, the spotlight will be brighter now that he has broken through.

So Andy finally did what we all thought, eventually, he would do.  Now the challenge for him is to build upon this initial success, and with rivals like Federer, Djokovic, Nadal, del Potro, Berdych, and other top players, it will be easier said than done.