by JOHN INVERDALE *TO BE ADVISED* , The Evening Standard

Nine years ago, writing a newspaper column about British gold medal prospects at the Sydney Olympics, I couldn't bring myself to jinx the coxless four and predict a fifth gold for Steve Redgrave, and so declared they would have to make do with silver. After their (obviously inevitable) glorious triumph, Matt Pinsent came into the BBC studios and said he'd read the piece at the time with genuine annoyance. ?Did you really believe what you'd written?' he asked. ?I didn't want to tempt fate.' I said. ?Fate,' said Pinsent, ?had nothing to do with it.'

And so it is with Wimbledon 2009. Are we merely hoping Andy Murray can win tomorrow and then again two days later, or do we genuinely believe it? Has he really got the game for it, or are there greater powers at work who are ensuring a happy ending is written in the stars?

It is so hard to look at the next four days objectively, because for seasoned watchers of the sport, the fact that no British man has won the men's title for 73 years has become the single most tedious Tennis statistic of them all. That's why, should Murray be champion come tea-time on Sunday, it will arguably be the greatest individual British sporting triumph of most of our lifetimes. His quarter-final draw against Juan Carlos Ferrero was extremely kind, almost a warm-down from the heroics of Monday night ? but Andy Roddick will be a wholly different proposition. The American is determined to escape the list of players labelled ?the best never to win at Wimbledon' and with his serve once more operating at full throttle, Murray's first objective must be to blunt Roddick's most lethal weapon by just blocking the ball back and setting up a succession of rallies.

If he can do that, and also ensure his own first-serve percentage is high enough to allow him to dictate most points on his own serve, then we should be just one match away from banishing that wretched statistic to the bin for ever.

However, the longer the game goes and the tighter it is, the more the inevitable tension on centre court may transfer itself to the Scot, as it did on Monday evening. Roddick should be the more tired of the two after his thrilling five-setter with Hewitt, so if Murray can make a good start, he could repeat his straight sets victory here from three years ago. Irrespective of Tommy Haas's resurgence over the past month ? his win over Djokovic was his 10th successive victory on grass ? it's hard to escape the feeling that Federer has a virtual bye into the final.

They have met three times in Grand Slams over the years, and while each of those matches have gone to five sets, Haas's solitary success was in the pre-King Roger days, and there in such a serenity about Federer at the moment, borne largely of finally winning the French Open , that it is almost impossible to see him losing to the German.

Haas is serving well, and hit some sparkling single-handed backhand winners past the Serb, but frailties in the consistency of the groundstrokes will surely count against him in the end.

To watch Federer against Karlovic was to see a master at work, a lion toying with its intended victim and then putting it out of its misery when he'd decided enough was enough.

He looked at the clock on the scoreboard, decided that two hours represented value for money for the centre court crowd, and then absented himself gracefully. So Federer will be in the final. And Murray ought to be there with him. And should that happen, Federer will win in four. I've got to say that because it's a tactic that worked nine years ago, and because it's Fred Perry's 100th year ? and don't we all believe in fate to some extent anyway?

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Has he really got the game for it, or are there greater powers at work who are ensuring a happy ending is written in the stars?

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