Andy Murray Takes Queen's Club Title Convincingly, Obnoxiously

Rain on Sunday disrupted the finals of the AEGON Championships at Queen's Club in London, pushing the contest between #2 seed Andy Murray and #5 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to Monday.

And for most of the match, it was an incredibly close affair.  Murray came back to win his second title at Queen's Club by the score of 3-6, 7-6(2), 6-4, breaking the Tsonga serve only once during the match. 

As far as thrilling finals go, this one was rather routine, save for a rather gauche bit of showmanship from Murray late in the deciding set:

To complete a hold at love, Murray opts for an absurd straddling tweener, instead of any number of more standard putaway options that presented themselves to him.

At the end of the clip, the commentator describes Murray's action as "a bit cheeky," which I prefer to mishear as "bitchy."  Because...really.  There's no need for that whatsoever, Andy.  The absurdly arrogant shot selection goes well beyond showmanship--it completely disrespects Tsonga, especially to do it in the most crucial junctures of a still-competitive final. 

In a sport that prides itself on its stodginess, for better or for worse, this sort of hotdogging would hardly have been well received by a crowd most anywhere else in the world.  But because it's Murray in Britain (and since he's British, not Scottish while he's winning), the fans seemed to eat it up.

With his win convincing run to the Queen's Club title (particularly his absolute dismantling of Andy Roddick in the semifinal), the Murray hype machine will be blaring at perhaps unprecedented levels this week and throughout Wimbledon, until the British hope again becomes the Scottish also-ran.  The British media loves winners and tears down losers, and is fickle like no press corps outside of Philadelphia. 

So for now Andy Murray is their winner, their favorite son.  But as soon as he does fall short of the title during the Wimbledon fortnight, expect The Sun, The Mirror, and all the other unfit to print tabloids to blow far smaller Murray mistakes wildly out of proportion.  And while it's tough not to feel sorry for him sometimes with the annual unfair press coverage, this year I'll tell myself that he had it coming.