Archie's Picks: Nadal-Murray

Only Andy Murray stands between Rafael Nadal and his 6th French Open final. Archie thinks Rafa's a lock.

===

As many of you know, I've taken on a new intern at the Fan Child's Two Cents. Archie is the big bad pitbull pictured above, and he's been handicapping a lot of the late round matches for me. Basically I place two cookies in front of him -- one representing each player in a prescribed match -- and whichever cookie he chomps on first is his official pick for the match. Before you laugh, realize that Archie has gone 5 for 7 thus far, and also realize that if you laugh, you might force Archie to show his teeth. He doesn't like to do that, so please, I beg you, watch yourself.

See Archie's Sharapova-Petkovic pick Here

See Archies Azarenka-Li pick Here

See Archie's Nadal-Soderling pick Here

See Archie's Schiavone-Bartoli pick Here

See Archie's Sharapova-Li pick Here

See Archie's Djokovic-Federer pick Here

Without any further ado, here is Archie's pick for Nadal-Murray.

Nadal-Murray: H2H

Archie's Pick: Nadal

Why: Because Rafa bites those trophies and I've always been jealous of that.

My Pick: Nadal

Why: First let me start by saying how ballsy Andy Murray's French Open effort has been. With Murray, it's not only about overcoming the ankle injury and the two-set deficit to Troicki -- it's also about how far he's had to come after what happened to him in the Australian Open final. He was slashed and burned by a stingy Djokovic in that match, and it put him in a huge funk (a funk that saw him lose to Donald Young is a serious funk indeed) that he is just now finding his way out of.

But as bad as things have been for Murray, in the Slamcentric reality that we view our tennis in he's actually doing quite well. He's been to the finals of the last Slam and now he is in the semis of the current slam. Win or lose, the lad has done well, and he's got enough steam to keep this thing rolling into Wimbledon and hard court season too.

But he's playing Nadal, for chrissakes, and ON CLAY. So, as much as I want to be the guy who makes the bold pick and ends up right, I'm pretty sure by picking Murray, I'd only be making a bold pick that ended up wrong. Murray over Nadal in a five-setter on the Roland Garros clay is about as far fetched as Donald Young over Murray at Indian Wells.

Hmmm....

Nah, I'm with Archie on this one. It's just too big of an ask for Murray here...