What are you made from, Andy Murray? What are you actually made from? Because there has to be more than just a metal hip holding you together, allowing you to still be producing these moments and matches that defy what should be possible. Even now, at the age of 35 and two days on from a five-hour epic that was his best win in years, Murray has conjured another, and a victory that will rank as perhaps the greatest and most extraordinary escape act of his entire career. Thanasi Kokkinakis played the match of his life, and it was not enough. For Murray, this was the ultimate trial of endurance and mentality, his odyssey, and he came through it.
It was already deep into the absurd stretches of the Melbourne night and at 2.59am when Murray clawed himself back and forced a fifth set. He had faced the storm Kokkinakis had whipped up on the Margaret Court Arena, amid a barrage of forehand assaults from a player who for two hours simply could not miss. It would have broken the will of most, but it did not begin to scratch the spirit of Murray. An extraordinary battle from the brink, sparked from a miracle point early in the third set, was just the start of the long road back – by the end, he had never played for longer, or later.
