LONDON – His two-set deficit in the Wimbledon quarterfinals already erased, Andy Murray evened the fifth at 4-all, looked into the Centre Court stands and shook his fist.
"Come on!" he bellowed. "Come on, now!"
Already riled up, the 15,000 or so spectators stood and roared even louder.
It's been 77 years since a British man won the country's Grand Slam tennis tournament, and Murray is giving the locals reason to believe that wait will end Sunday.
Two more victories to go.
Buoyed by a boisterous partisan crowd, the second-seeded Murray got past 54th-ranked Fernando Verdasco of Spain 4-6, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4, 7-5 Wednesday to complete his seventh career comeback after trailing by two sets.
"Great atmosphere at the end of the match. ... I love it when it's like that. It was extremely noisy," said Murray, who lost last year's Wimbledon final to Roger Federer. "They were right into it, pretty much every single point."
Into the semifinals at the All England Club for the fifth consecutive year, Murray will face No. 24 Jerzy Janowicz of Poland on Friday. The other semifinal is No. 1 Novak Djokovic of Serbia against No. 8 Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina.
"For sure, (the) crowd will not really help me, but we'll see how it's going to be," said Janowicz, the first Polish man to get to the final four at a major tournament. "This is my first semifinal ever, so I don't know what to expect."
The rest of the guys left are more accustomed to being at this stage.
Especially Djokovic, who extended his streak to 13 consecutive Grand Slam semifinals — second in history only to Federer's 23 — by beating No. 7 Tomas Berdych 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-3.
Djokovic entered Wednesday with a 13-2 lead in their head-to-head series, but one loss came at Wimbledon in 2010, when Berdych was the runner-up, and the other came in their most recent meeting, at Rome in May. Wednesday's first set was tight as can be, and Berdych led 5-4 in the tiebreaker before faltering. He sent a return long, badly missed what should have been a routine backhand, then pushed a forehand wide for another error.
That gave Djokovic the opening set, but Berdych responded strongly, breaking twice to lead 3-0 in the second. Not surprisingly, Djokovic awoke again, taking seven of the next eight games.
"I don't know how I managed to turn the second set around," said six-time major champion Djokovic, who won Wimbledon in 2011. "I managed to step in and just tried to be a little bit more aggressive. That brought me a victory."
He's won all 15 sets he's played the past 1½ weeks. Del Potro, the 2009 U.S. Open champion, can boast the same after his 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (5) win against No. 4 David Ferrer.
At the start, though, things looked grim for del Potro.
On the fifth point against Ferrer, the 6-foot-6 del Potro's left foot slid out from under him as he sprinted to reach a ball. Del Potro's heavily wrapped left knee, which he hyperextended on a face-first tumble in the third round, slackened, then bent backward.
"Really painful," del Potro said. "I was scared."
He fell to the turf and rolled over twice, then stayed down until a trainer came out to check on him and dispense anti-inflammatory medicine.
"Magic pills," del Potro called them.
After a 10-minute break, he resumed playing — and playing quite well.
He has until Friday to get ready for his third career major semifinal, and first at Wimbledon. Del Potro is 3-8 against Djokovic, but won their most recent meeting (at Indian Wells, Calif., in March) and their only previous encounter at the All England Club (in the bronze-medal match at the 2012 London Olympics).
"I will need to be 100 percent — or 110 percent — against him," del Potro said.
Murray was far from his best for the first hour-plus against Verdasco, whose 130 mph serves and go-for-the-lines big cuts made things difficult.
"It was a tough situation," Murray said.
One he might not have been able to get through in the past, he acknowledged.
But Murray has matured as a tennis player. Twelve months ago, he wept after losing to Roger Federer in the Wimbledon final, dropping to 0-4 in Grand Slam title matches.
Four weeks later, also at the All England Club, Murray defeated Federer for an Olympic gold medal. And then Murray finally earned a major championship, beating Djokovic in five sets at the U.S. Open.
Murray then reached a third consecutive Grand Slam final at the Australian Open in January, but lost to Djokovic there.
All of that recent success helped Murray against Verdasco.
"When you play more and more matches, and gain more experience, you understand how to turn matches around and how to change the momentum of games," the 26-year-old from Scotland said after winning for the 16th time in a row on a grass court. "Maybe when I was younger, I could have lost that match. But I think I've learnt how to come back from tough situations more as I got older."
When the draw came out nearly two weeks ago, everyone pointed with interest at the potential quarterfinal between Federer and Rafael Nadal. Funny how things work out. Nadal lost in the first round, Federer in the second, and ever since, much of the media and sports fans here figured Murray had as good a chance as anyone to claim a trophy no British man has earned since Fred Perry in 1936.
Asked if his triumph in Flushing Meadows lessened the pressure to succeed at home, Murray said: "It's pretty much the same. Not a whole lot's changed."
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