French Open 2012: Andy Murray dismissess fitness talk So what about Boris Becker's suggestion that he might as well withdraw from Roland Garros altogether, and concentrate on his grass-court preparations? Which is exactly what his coach Lendl did when he was desperate to win Wimbledon in 1990. That met with short shrift. "Ivan skipped the French Open because he'd won all of the other slams and he wanted to try to win all four," Murray said. If I was at the end of my career and I only had Wimbledon left to win, I'd consider it. But right now there is no reason for me not to play the French Open. If I didn't think I could win it, I wouldn't be playing tennis. There's no point being here otherwise. Murray's defiance is encouraging. He has lacked a cutting edge on the clay courts this year, but at least that means he goes into Paris tournament with few expectations riding on his creaky back. Lendl arrived here in 1984 as an apparently lost cause, the man who had been dubbed the "Choke-oslovakian" after a sequence of defeats in Grand Slam finals. Two weeks later he was lifting the trophy. To ask Murray to pull off a similar surprise is surely too much to ask. It would be a minor triumph if he could match last year's run to the semi-final, where Nadal beat him 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 on the court that might one day bear the Spaniard's name. If Nadal wins, it will be his seventh French Open title in eight years, breaking the record of six he shares with Bjorn Borg. On clay courts, Nadal is tennis's answer to Ed Moses: the man who cannot lose. The argument over who is the ultimate king of clay - Nadal or Bjorn Borg - has long since been settled. Even Borg admits that he has been relegated to second place. He also suspects that Nadal has plenty more power to add. "If he stays healthy and motivated there's not going to be too many players who can beat him on clay," Borg said. He can win many more Grand Slam titles as long as his body stands up to the workload. The conditions at Roland Garros play to Nadal's unique gift: the pulverising forehand that travels with more top spin than any other shot in the game. This is no orthodox stroke: he leans back, in defiance of the coaching manual, and wraps the racket around his head like a lasso. On clay, he has more time to prepare his big backswing, and to run around his weaker backhand side. On the big points, it often feels as though his ratio of forehands to backhands is about eight to one. Novak Djokovic neutralised Nadal's howitzer last year by playing with relentless pace and accuracy, making him scuttle from side to side so that he had no time to line up his sights. These two have contested the past three Grand Slam finals, with Djokovic winning on each occasion. But the signs are that the worm has turned.