Murray Excited By Village Experience

One of the charms of the Olympics is the emphasis it places on anonymity. It is about people you have never heard of competing in sports you have never seen. It promotes the most unlikely of heroes. It is for this reason that tennis has not sat comfortably within the Games. Tennis has the bling of Wimbledon and the other majors, it does not need the extra luster of Olympic gold.

Serendipitously, then, the Olympics have thrown up a series of uncelebrated winners. Name the men to have won tennis gold since the sport was reintroduced in 1988 is a particularly nerdy trivia question and only the committed can reel off 'Nicolas Massu, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Andre Agassi, Marc Rosset and Miroslav Mecir'. Agassi, and perhaps Kafelnikov, aside it is a roll call of the unlikely. Other medalists have included Arnaud Di Pasquale, Tim Mayotte, Jordi Arrese, Andrei Cherkasov and Mardy Fish.

Usually it would suit British tennis perfectly to have a tournament won by outsiders, but Andy Murray, who won the Cincinnati Masters a week ago, hardly qualifies in this category. He is now 12-1 fourth favorite behind Roger Federer 2-1, Rafa Nadal 9-4, Novak Djokovic 4-1 - and it is 50-1 bar.

He has seemed relaxed and excited since arriving here. He is staying in the Village and enjoying the whole Olympic experience. 'You've got to try and get involved with the other athletes,' he says. 'If you stay in a hotel it's more like playing in a normal tennis tournament.'

His mood is good and so is his form. 'I've played really well over the past few months and if I can keep that up I'm sure I can win a few matches and if you get through to the third round and quarter-finals anything can happen.'

Waiting at the quarter-final stage, however, is the seemingly unsurpassable Nadal. 'Every time I've seen him and played with him, he's brought so much intensity and I don't think that's going to change,' Murray said.

'Maybe in three or four years that is going to change, but not now. He's been hungry all year and has really improved his game on all the other surfaces.'

It is this all-surface game that has so daunted Federer. His Paris defeat was brutal, but the one at Wimbledon may have been more mentally damaging. If he could lose on grass, he could lose anywhere.

The unraveling of Federer has been swift. Since losing at Wimbledon he has lost to Ivo Karlovic in the second round and Giles Simon in the first round. These are players to whom he should not lose a set, let alone a match.

Federer's hero has long been Bjorn Borg and, like the Swede, he may have exhausted himself sustaining his implacable façade. The point of Federer, as with Borg, is his invincibility. When you reach the heights they have reached, any fall can be potentially disastrous. The advantage of a more conventional see-sawing career is that you gain experience at mounting comebacks. Federer has no such ballast and has every reason to feel confused and lost at the moment.

The men's tournament promises to be engrossing and, perhaps, of lasting significance, and the women's event may be no less important. In Athens, Li Ting and Sun Tiantian became the first Chinese players to win a tennis gold medal. This year, Sun attempts to defend the title, in tandem with Peng Shuai.

At Wimbledon, Zheng Jie comprehensively defeated the first seed, Ana Ivanovic, and gave Serena Williams a decent game. She is one of four Chinese players in the women's draw.

Earlier this year Michael Chang, known as Zhang Depei in China, opened the Michael Chang Mission Hills Tennis Academy in Shenzhen, where, on 50 courts, he oversees training of young hopefuls.

'It [the 2004 gold medal] can spark a new interest in tennis among the Chinese people,' Yu Liqiao, the gold medal winners' coach, said after their victory and her prediction has come true. Interest has been sparked and it seems inevitable that success will follow.