Whether he was motivated by honesty or petulance, none of it needed saying. He could simply have laughed and said: 'Well, the bookies don't get rich without knowing a thing or two. Good luck to Andy - we'll see how he handles the pressure.'Instead, he reinforced the notion that he dislikes playing Murray, and indeed that he dislikes Murray.I imagine Murray himself might have smiled thinly on hearing Federer's words. It's almost as if the two of them are starring in a variation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Whereas each act of debauchery by Gray left him unmarked but corrupted his portrait, so every unworthy remark of Federer's seems only to make Murray bigger and stronger.
