Easy does it: Andy Murray has only dropped 22 games on his way to the last eight of the Australian Open Photo: EPA
Unlike with one of Connolly’s meandering and whimsical monologues, it did not take long to realise where this was heading and how it was going to finish.
There was much for Connolly to applaud in the sunshine at Melbourne Park, as Murray played brilliantly to make the world No 11 look extremely ordinary, and his 6-3, 6-1, 6-1 victory over the Viennese left-hander took him through to a match on Wednesday against Alexandr Dolgopolov, an unseeded Ukrainian ranked 46 in the world who was a surprise five-set winner over Robin Soderling, the fourth seed from Sweden.
After his first four appearances at the opening grand slam of the year, Murray has conceded just 22 games, so even if all his opponents clubbed together they would only just have enough to have won three sets against last January’s runner-up Roger Federer.
Murray, who has always enjoyed Connolly’s material and who was delighted that his fellow Scot had accepted his invitation to sit with his entourage, is yet to even be extended to a 6-4 or 7-5 set, never mind a tiebreak: in each of the 12 sets he has played, he has dropped no more than three games.
If Melzer, who had lost his four previous matches with Murray, was going to achieve a different outcome on their fifth meeting, he was going to have to consistently hit cold winners, or to work the world No 5 around and then take a swing. Yet Melzer was missing far too many lines, and though he kept himself together in the opening set, thereafter he became more emotional, on one occasion hurling his racket down into the ground, and on others letting out little bursts of angry German.
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