Hitting Back (15 page)

I knew what I was doing wrong. I was rushing, which is the
worst thing you can do against a player like him because he
makes so few mistakes. I was trying to finish the points quickly
and moving so fast between them that I wasn't really thinking
about what I was doing. I had to put a stop to that. I took a
toilet break at the end of the set and forced myself to settle
down. It worked better than I could have dreamed. I won the
next set 6–1 and nine games later found myself holding a
match point on his serve.

We became involved in a rally. The first few shots were fine
but so much was riding on the outcome that as the rally
extended to seven, eight, nine, ten strokes, I became more and
more nervous, my arm felt more and more heavy and,
inevitably, he saved the match point. Then he aced me. I
thought: 'Oh, God, typical.' He held his serve. It's 5–5.

Then I hold my serve and create another match point during
his next service game. Same thing happens. Another ace. That
sparks the thought: 'What can I do?' which is not a good one
to have at this stage because we are about to enter the tiebreak.
I am still nervous but maybe he is too because he makes
a big mistake on his forehand which gives me a 4 points to 2
lead. The seventh point tends to be huge in a tie-break, and
winning that point gives me a great advantage. Two points
later I'm 6 points to 3 up, match point again. Another rally. I
hit a backhand down the line, he scurries across, picks it up,
but I'm there to crack a backhand cross-court winner that he
can't reach. My brain is trying to grasp what is going on here.
I am a champion.

Then I didn't really know what to do. This had never
happened to me before. I'd just won my first ATP title in a final
set tie-break against a guy I used to really love watching when
I was growing up, and it was pretty awesome. My coach wasn't
there, but my girlfriend was, so I climbed up to the players' box
and kissed her. Twice.

That night I couldn't sleep at all, for the adrenaline still
streaming round my system. The next day I took Kim shopping
and she bought a pair of sunglasses and a bag, which may not
seem a huge thing to do as a celebration but we couldn't think
of anything else. I didn't buy myself anything. I was happy
enough with the result.

But tennis never lets you stay satisfied for long. It would be
an understatement to say that the whole American stretch did
not go so well after that. It was terrible. From the end of
February when I played in Las Vegas to the start of Wimbledon
four months later, I won precisely
five
matches. I lost in so
many first rounds that it was almost a waste unpacking my
bags. Many were close matches that ran to three sets, but that
wasn't much of a consolation.

What was wrong with me? I had no idea. The sad details are
that at Indian Wells at the beginning of March I lost to Nikolay
Davydenko 1–6 6–3 3–6 in the second round. Two weeks later
I'm losing to Stanislas Wawrinka 5–7 6–3 4–6 in the first
round at Miami. Maybe I'll have better luck on the clay courts
in Europe. Apparently not. I lost to Jean-Rene Lisnard, the
local boy, in Monte Carlo 6–4 6–7 5–7. A week later David
Ferrer put me out of Barcelona in the second round 6–4 6–7
1–6. In Rome I lost in straight sets to another local boy, Filippo
Volandri. At Roland Garros, my first appearance in the main
draw of the French Open ended with me losing to Gael
Monfils, my old friend from France, in five sets. The pattern
was pretty clear. I was making a lot of home crowds very
happy by losing to their favourite players, but I was beginning
to take it personally.

I had finally split up with Mark Petchey just before Monte
Carlo, so I was travelling without a coach, just my physio and
sometimes my agent, and I was finding it all a struggle
mentally. I desperately wanted to start doing more winning
and find again the feeling that I had had in San Jose. I wasn't
mentally breaking down but was really depressed and
definitely not enjoying life. I talked to my agent and my mum
about it. Then Mum started travelling with me again, and
when I managed to win a couple of matches at Nottingham the
week before Wimbledon, it all seemed to turn around.

Maybe that place has a special effect on me but as I walked
on to the Centre Court at Wimbledon for the first time in 2006,
I suddenly felt confident again. I don't know the reason.
Perhaps it was the support from the crowd who were fantastic.
Whatever it was, I played well enough to beat Nicolas Massu
of Chile, ranked eleven places higher than me, in straight sets,
and if you watch the video you can see how much it meant to
me because at the moment of victory I let out a huge roar of
relief.

My next match – also on the Centre Court – was against the
Frenchman Julien Benneteau. I should have won in straight sets
but the onset of darkness seemed to disrupt me. I wanted to
finish the match. I was up two sets but I was rushing as I saw
the light slipping away. It meant I was playing my opponent
and the darkness at the same time, and I ended up throwing
away the third set. Then the umpire suspended the match for
bad light and I had to spend all night annoyed with myself.

My nerves were bad the following day so that I was almost
ridiculously careful. I hardly missed a ball but I was hitting it
really softly, just putting it back into court, hoping he would
miss. Luckily he did and I was in the third round, but I knew I
should have played more aggressively.

And that is when the whole Paraguay thing happened, the
next hugely over-blown controversy of 2006. Let me say, here
and now, that I am Scottish. I am also British. I am
not
anti-English.
I never was. I'm patriotic and proud to be Scottish, but
my girlfriend is English, my gran who I love to bits is English
and half her family is English. My fitness trainer's English, my
physio's English, some of my best friends are English. I have a
flat in London, I supported Tim Henman all through his
career, I love watching Ricky Hatton and Amir Khan, two
English boxers, I practise in England with English players, I
play Davis Cup for Britain – but I love being Scottish. There's
nothing wrong with that.

OK. What happened was a little joke – again – that went
wrong. It was the time of the 2006 World Cup and England
were due to play Paraguay. Tim Henman and I were being
interviewed together for a newspaper article on behalf of our
sponsors Robinsons, and before we started the journalist asked
Tim about England's chances in the World Cup and asked me
who I would be supporting. He was making the point that
Scotland weren't there. I got the joke. I just laughed.

We did the interview and the last question was: 'Who will
you be supporting at the World Cup?' Remembering our
previous banter, I just said: 'Whoever England are playing, ha
ha.' I had a smile on my face. It was obvious I was joking and
just entering into the spirit of our previous conversation.

It wasn't reported like that. The gist of the headlines was
that I hated the English. They made up stories about me buying
a Paraguay shirt. I never said that. It was a complete lie. The
whole thing was absolute nonsense.

I had already dealt with this nationality issue a little at the
French Open Junior semi-finals the year before. It was one of
the first big press conferences I had ever done and I was being
asked about all sorts of things including the fact I was Scottish,
not English. It was fine. It made an interesting conversation.
Bud Collins, the famous American commentator, asked me –
probably for fun – what the difference was.

I said obviously there was a difference because they're two
different countries, and I'm from Scotland not England. That's
just a fact. I said it was like calling some one from France
'German'. It's just wrong. Is Bud Collins a Canadian? If
someone walked up to an English person and asked them if
they were Scottish, they would say 'No.' That wouldn't make
them anti-Scottish. That's just pointing out where you're from.
It isn't my fault that I have to do this from time to time because
the majority of the world thinks England is the only country in
Britain.

I don't really worry about who won the Battle of
Bannockburn, although Robert the Bruce and his boys won it
easily I think. Being Scottish is just a fact, not a racist state of
mind.

So that is the context of what happened at Wimbledon. One
minute everything was fine, the next I'm this Scot who hates
the English. I remember walking through the crowd on my way
back from practice when I overheard a woman talking on her
mobile phone. 'That Scottish wanker's just walked by,' she said
and I was quite shocked. That's when I realised how big this
thing had become. I purposely hadn't been reading the
newspapers and I had been trying not to pay any attention to
it, but that was when I realised that some people had taken
great offence.

I probably shouldn't have said it. But, again, it was a
joke
.
If anyone understood all the circumstances, they would have
realised that. I walked on to court to play Andy Roddick
that day in the third round still feeling quite awkward
about the whole experience. A few months earlier in Australia
I had played dreadfully because of the storm I had caused
by accident. This time I was stronger. My game didn't
implode.

It was a strange atmosphere to begin with because we had
already been watching the beginning of England's quarter-final
against Portugal, having beaten Paraguay in the previous
round. (So my non-existent Paraguay support hadn't brought
them much luck.) Wayne Rooney had been sent off and you
could tell that loads of people on Centre Court were half
listening to the match on their radios. Even so, Andy and I did
our best to distract them because we played a close, intense
match where both of us had chances.

I don't remember that much about it, but I know that we
were really pumped up and exchanging words across the net. I
get on well with him usually and I had practised with him
before Wimbledon started, but he was giving me a little bit of
shit on court. That's fine. That's what happens in sport. It is
the same as football, the guys are trying to wind the other guys
up, as Portugal's Ronaldo had just proved in his confrontation
with Rooney that ended with Wayne getting a red card. Players
try and disrupt their opponent's game plan and that is all Andy
was doing.

I managed to win in straight sets 7–6 6–4 6–4. It was a huge
win for me and one of the first questions Gary Richardson, the
BBC journalist, asked me in his interview after the match was:
'You probably know that England have just lost, what do you
think of that?' I said something like: 'Look, it's a shame. It
would have been great for British sport if England had won the
World Cup.'

After a match like that the last thing I wanted to do was
discuss why I'd made a joke out of something and it had been
– I keep saying this – blown out of all proportion, but I knew
I had to do something. In the end, I just wanted to clear it up
by saying the right thing and getting it over with. I don't know
whether my tactful answer made any difference to what people
thought about me. I just remember being quite annoyed about
the whole fuss.

I had never won through to the second week of a grand slam
before, and at this point I didn't know what to do. I was
nineteen years old, I didn't have a coach and I couldn't decide
when or how to practise on the Sunday off. As a result, I felt a
little bit flat when I played my old rival from junior days,
Marcos Baghdatis, on a sweltering Centre Court and lost in
straight sets.

Maybe it was a good thing. I had played so well against
Roddick, but you could play seven matches over fourteen days
at a grand slam and I needed to learn how to pace myself. You
don't want to be too distant and relaxed. You don't want to be
over-anxious and impatient either. I don't think I had the
balance quite right yet.

Jimmy Connors said afterwards that I needed to do a 'gut
check', not just with tennis but with my attitude, so that I was
able to 'embrace the pressure'. That is, more or less, what I said
too. I needed to get stronger, physically and mentally, and my
game needed to improve, but I wasn't down-hearted. I still
thought that by twenty-one or twenty-two, I could be playing
my best tennis at grand slams.

Clearly, I needed a coach again, and not long afterwards a
deal was done that allowed me to work with Brad Gilbert, the
former top-10 player who had coached Andre Agassi and
Roddick and was reckoned to be one of the best in the world.
The Lawn Tennis Association had hired him to work with a
number of the British players, but it was accepted that he
would be travelling a fair amount of the time with me. The
papers debated whether he was worth the money, a reputed
£750,000, but that was nothing to do with me. I was just glad,
having been coachless since the spring, to have someone so
knowledgeable in my corner. It seemed to work OK – within
about a month I had beaten Roger Federer.

Directly after Wimbledon I made the so-called 'glamour trip'
to Newport again and this time made the semi-finals. I did
moan about the courts, but not in my press conference. I was
learning. From there I had to come back for the Davis Cup
against Israel at Eastbourne, which was where I discovered I
would be linking up with Brad. We started working together in
Washington DC, where I immediately made the final and then
moved on to Toronto where I reached the semi-finals, having
beaten Tim Henman again in the second round.

Strangely, a week later in Cincinnati, I played Tim yet again.
The match went to three sets but produced the same result. I
won. That was three times in a row now in less than a year and
my reward was to play Federer, the runaway number one in the
world who had just won his fourth Wimbledon in a row.
Maybe that wasn't much of a reward after all.