Morning:
8°c
Lou Reed never had such a perfect day. Hours before he arrived for his own match, Andy Murray had already enjoyed an excellent afternoon on Centre Court, where that bouncing ball of ocker repugnance Lleyton Hewitt had turned back his milometer to remove the Argentine juggernaut Juan Martin del Potro, much the most dangerous land mine on Murray's path to the Wimbledon final.
Murray's opponent Ernests Gulbis, meanwhile, was more of a Welcome Break from the tensions of Monday's first round.
You have to love Gulbis for that unexpected 's' at the end of his first name, because it brings to mind the catchphrase of Aleksandr, everyone's favourite insurance-flogging meerkat. And simples it certainly was for our beloved as the Latvian obediently surrendered to his artistry and tactical nous.
Gulbis, it should be said, is no mug. A year ago, the 20-year-old was being talked up as a great star of the future, and he may yet mature into that. But he has palpably regressed since then, largely because for all his gigantic serve and brutal ground strokes, he seems to be tennis' Lauren.
Look at his face and it's clear that he just ain't bovvered, possibly due to coming from such a wealthy family that he's been known to travel to tournaments, despite the lowly ranking, by private jet.
He also lacks an iota of the subtlety, variety and intelligence that make his opponent such a titanic force, and Murray dismantled him with sweatless elegance. Or even, to adapt that song from High Society, swelegance.
If Murray's flawless movement makes him a Fred Astaire of grass, the flat-footed Gulbis is John Sergeant, and he was clumsily bamboozled throughout by the cunning spins, heavy slices and infuriating changes of pace with which the Scot routinely erodes the defences of far more resilient customers than him. Customers, dare one say it, such as Roger Federer himself.
Murray was magisterial once he'd drained the last dregs of residual nerviness from Monday's opening gambit by saving a pair of break points in his opening service game. They were the last he faced.
From then on his first serve was phenomenally good, while Gulbis doesn't return well enough to capitalise on a short, slow second serve that remains the secondary cause (after Federer's rampant genius) for doubting his chances of taking this title.
Murray, on the other hand, is the best returner in the world (jointly with the absent Rafa Nadal), and once he'd broken in the fifth game any faint worry about the outcome evaporated.
At times he imposed his superiority with disdainful flamboyance, and some shots - memorably a sliced backhand lob of a kind I'd never seen before - had you purring with the awed appreciation usually reserved for Federer.
At other times, content to wait for the inevitable mistake, he took so much pace off his strokes that it reminded you of Arthur Ashe bewildering Jimmy Connors in the 1975 final. At all times, whatever tactics he deployed worked like a dream. Once he'd snaffled a tight second set, what passes for Gulbis's spirit was crushed and it seemed the moment to take an intimate look at Murray's draw.
May the Lord Almighty forgive the fate-tempting idiocy, but it could scarcely be more inviting. With Del Potro gone, it requires a mighty act of the imagination, if not a drop of mescaline, to picture him failing to reach the final if he even comes close to maintaining such imperious form.
With his third and fourth round matches virtual gimmes, the next potential danger point comes in the quarters and only then should he meet Fernando Gonzales, who recently beat him at the French Open.
Yet Murray is infinitely stronger on grass than on clay, while it's vice versa for the Chilean, so he should comfortably win that confrontation.
As for the semis, his likely opponent there is either the resurgent but weaponless Hewitt or the reliable but limited Andy Roddick, both of whom he would expect to brush aside.
And then, lest we haven't got far enough ahead of ourselves already, comes the Fed, or possibly Novak Djokovic.
It is at that final hurdle, and only there, that the dodgy second serve has the potential to undo the Scotsman, because if it's still sitting up with "smack me down the line" embossed all over it in bold italics, as on Monday and on gratifyingly rare outings yesterday, it will constitute an offer neither could refuse.
Ordinarily it would feel criminally hubristic to be fretting about the Wimbledon final four matches in advance, but there is nothing remotely ordinary about Andy Murray.
It has been blindingly obvious for a long while that this is an extraordinary talent, and yesterday's masterclass against a challenger almost computer-designed to showcase his brilliance taught us nothing new about the young Scottish maestro.
What it did do, however, was instill genuine confidence that it will take something outlandish to keep him for what now looks an unbreakable appointment with history on Sunday week.
