Hitting Back (19 page)

Other players have other opinions. I know that Lleyton
Hewitt once said: 'I'd like to think that tennis is clean but I
can't say a hundred per cent. Sometimes you are not so sure. I
know I'm clean but sometimes guys look stronger in the fifth
set than they did in the first. You have to worry about that.'
That is his opinion. I don't really worry that much. The testing
makes me feel more comfortable about it.

I get criticised a lot for being too skinny. I've been called a
'scruffy Hugh Grant', which actually isn't that bad because
he's quite good looking. I had a reputation for being unfit
when I first came on the tour and maybe some people thought
I would bulk up quicker if I took steroids, but that's obscene. I
would never do that. I have worked really hard for my muscle
with my fitness trainers in the gym and I would never take a
short cut. It is not something that would make me happy.
Imagine winning Wimbledon and then looking at yourself in
the mirror and seeing a cheat in the reflection. It would feel
awful.

Look at Marion Jones, one of the best athletes the Olympics
has ever seen. She lied to the whole world by denying she took
drugs and now she is locked away from her family in prison.
Her Olympic medals are all gone, her reputation is shot. Drugs
are just a short cut to the end of your career.

I don't even eat bananas. Not because I am scared of
contamination but because I don't rate them. I think it's a myth
that they're good for you as an energy-giver. Players do sit
there and eat them at changeovers, but it can't be to give them
energy because they take ages to digest and because other
things are way better. Maybe it is just because they are easy to
eat compared with chewy bars that get stuck in your teeth. And
you thought we just worried about our forehands.

To be honest, I think bananas are pathetic fruit. They don't
look great for a start. They're not straight and I don't like the
black bit at the bottom. All right, they're not terrible but
they're such an average fruit. I'm more a peaches and plums
sort of guy. And apples . . .

Apples are miles better. A good Granny Smith, a soft pear. A
banana isn't even juicy. You bite into a pineapple and you get
this great burst of juice. There's no juice in a banana. And it
squashes easily. If you put one in your bag and someone kicks
it, it spatters about all over the place and then sticks to
everything. At least with an apple, all that happens to it is a
bruise. You can still eat it. But if a banana gets squashed –
there's no coming back from that.

They call me opinionated. I guess they're right. Even about
bananas.

Just when you think it is all going fine . . . The first three
months of 2007 seemed pretty good to me. I reached the final
in Doha, played the greatest game of my life so far against Rafa
Nadal in the Australian Open, won San José for the second
time in two years and topped it all by reaching two straight
semi-finals at the master series events in America. On the 13th
of April 2007, two years after turning pro, I entered the World
Top-10 for the first time. Another goal achieved. Maybe I
should have noticed the omen.

A month later, actually on the day of my twentieth birthday
with my mum and gran over from Scotland to watch me, I hit
a forehand against Filippo Volandri in a first-round match in
Hamburg and felt a horrible pain. Game over, tournament
over, summer over. I didn't play another match until August.
A scan had shown up a small tear in the tendon of my right
wrist and that injury wrecked a huge chunk of the season
including Roland Garros, Queen's and Wimbledon. It was such
a difficult and annoying time, not just for me but also for the
people around me.

It was all the more frustrating because the year had begun
with so much promise. I had been working with Brad Gilbert
for about five months by now and my first tournament in Doha
convinced me we were on the right track. Having beaten
Davydenko in straight sets in the semi-final, I lost to Ljubicic
4–6 4–6 in the final. I hadn't played as well in the final as I did
in the semi, but since he was ranked 5th and I was ranked 17th,
I couldn't be too disappointed. It was a statement of intent. I
was playing well and next up was the Australian Open.

The previous year had been my horrible debut when I lost in
the first round, after the row in New Zealand about sexism,
and I felt really determined to do better in Melbourne this time.
I do really like Australia and I love the crowd at Melbourne
Park. It is a great place: the people are unbelievably friendly
and they certainly love their sport. The Australian Open is, far
and away, the most relaxed grand slam, and it is easier to get
around there than my other favourite tournament, the US
Open in New York, where the traffic is a shambles. In fact, the
only thing wrong with Australia, as far as I'm concerned, is
that it's rather far away.

But that didn't bother me as the tournament progressed. I
was feeling quite at home, especially after my first-round win
over Alberto Martin of Spain, which was on the Vodafone
arena with the roof closed because of the heat. It was the
closest I've ever been to a 'triple bagel', winning a match love,
love and love. He managed to win the eighteenth game to make
the final score 6–0 6–0 6–1. I was a bit annoyed because you
probably only get one chance to win a match like that in your
lifetime, but even I realised it wasn't worth getting too upset
when you win a match that easily.

The next two matches, against another Spaniard, Fernando
Verdasco, and Juan Ignacio Chela of Argentina, were tougher
but I still won in straight sets to make the last sixteen. My
opponent was the world number two and French Open
champion Rafa Nadal, who I hadn't played since junior days.
He was a year older than me, quite a few pounds heavier and
one of the most aggressively physical players who has ever
played the game. This was only the second time in my life I'd
reached the fourth round of a grand slam. It was going to be
the perfect examination of how far I'd come as a player.

At nearly 2am on the stadium court in Australia, after five
sets of tennis against one of the best players in the world, I
knew how far I'd come. It was the greatest game I had played
so far. Both of us maintained such a high standard of tennis all
the way through, and there were so many twists and turns
in the course of the match that it would have to go down as a
near-classic. It had everything, including an underdog (me) and
a great set of fans who stayed to the end, and a little group of
Scottish supporters who gave me a standing ovation in the fifth
set when I won my one and only game.

It was the first time in my career that I had come off a match
as brutal as that without losing due to a physical issue. I hadn't
been blown away despite the awesome force that Nadal can
produce. I held my own against him. I'd worked really hard in
the off-season in Florida to get ready for this and I was still
fighting to the very last point of the match. Maybe I only lost
because he had more experience of playing big matches. While
I'd only reached the fourth round of Wimbledon before, Nadal
had already won two French Opens (he was on his way to
three) and played in a Wimbledon final.

In the fifth set I had six break points on his first two service
games. Had I converted them, I'd have led 3–0 instead of
finding myself 0–3 down. It was that close. But finding myself
down to someone as seriously good and fit as him, it was just
too tough to come back. If I'd made a better start to the fifth
set, I think I would have won.

Mentally, I wasn't crushed. For me, the worst thing in tennis
is not losing matches. What I hate most is underperforming. If
you're playing well and losing, it is easier to focus on the next
point and believe you can win in the end. If you are playing
poorly, it is much harder to believe you can get back into the
match. I know how close I came to winning that match. Tennis
is a game of inches. You can hit ten unforced errors, but on
another day, if the wind blows a little harder, you can hit
exactly the same shots and they will be ten outright winners.
The better player usually wins, but these little things can still
swing the momentum.

I wasn't sick with annoyance when the match was over.
Everyone was gutted for me. Kim was there, so were Mum and
Brad, and they all said: 'You did great. You deserved to win.
Bad luck, you'll get him next time.' But I just wanted to spend
some time on my own. I took a car back to the hotel and went
for a run, up and down one of the streets, at 3am. I was sorting
out my head. I was, for sure, disappointed that I didn't win but
that was the match where I realised the standard of tennis I
could produce. I was proud of the way I'd fought and I'm sure
everyone watching enjoyed it.

You take away a load of confidence from a match like that
and I proved that in the very next tournament by winning San
José for the second year running. I think the first time was the
more special of the two, but this one was still pretty cool.
Maybe I had fond memories of 2006 because Kim had been
with me – and Brad, with respect, wasn't quite as good-looking.
(I certainly didn't want to kiss him when I won.) But
it was a good effort to win the final again with almost a
mirror-image score, 7–6 in the third set. This time the
opposition was Ivo Karlovic, the gigantic big-server from
Croatia we call 'Lurch' (but not necessarily to his face), who
at 6'10" is the tallest player in the history of the men's tour.
Brad used to say that facing him is like having someone serve
out of a tree at you! I lost the first set in a tie-break but after
that I worked him out better. I knew I'd have a chance
because my return of serve is the best part of my game. Even
so, you have about a millisecond to see the ball coming at
you. Sometimes you barely see it at all.

To reach the final, I'd beaten Andy Roddick again in the
semis and he might have been getting a bit sick of me by now.
We'd played three times already and I led 2–1 after my third-round
victory at Wimbledon the year before. Now here we
were again. The first set was really tense and I came through a
first-set tie-break 12–10 before closing out the second set 6–4.

I had a lot of close matches that week and came through all
of them. Brad was a firm believer in fighting through matches
even when you are not playing your best tennis, and his
philosophy seemed to be working for me. In the second round
against Kristian Pless of Denmark, ranked 83, I won the first
set easily and then blew the next in the tie-break before coming
back to take the third set 6–4. Against Hyung-Taik Lee, the
Korean, in the quarters the match came down to a final-set tiebreak.
It was a struggle, but it was a positive sign that I was
mentally strong enough to keep winning the tough ones.

The greatest comeback I'd ever made was the year before,
just after Wimbledon, when I was playing horrendously in the
first round of Newport against a Brazilian ranked 139 in the
world, Ricardo Mello. I was down 5–2 and two breaks in the
final set. This was the match when I earned a point penalty for
the only time in my career on the tour, mainly because the
courts were so terrible. I saved five or six match points, I can't
quite remember, and then went on to win 7–6. Memories like
that can really be good for you if you find yourself in the same
situation again. I was learning all the time.

The upbeat feeling around San José got even better when my
brother Jamie won his first doubles title there. I couldn't really
watch it, even though I was there, because I was pretty
nervous. It is always much more nerve-racking watching Jamie
than it is playing my own matches. I don't get that nervous
when I play, but I've struggled to watch him from a really
young age. I don't know why. I suppose I've always wanted
him to do really well. There is nothing else I get nervous about
in this profession.

For most of the final I was hiding in the locker room
occasionally watching on the television screen. Only when he
was so close to winning that it was impossible for him to lose,
did I run outside and watch in person. It was great. We had
cause for a double celebration but we didn't have time. We
had to catch the night flight to Memphis and, anyway, neither
of us likes champagne.

Brad's old pupil, Roddick, had his revenge in Memphis but
at least I reached the semi-finals. I was ranked 13 in decent
shape and going into the back-to-back Masters Series events,
the biggest in tennis outside the grand slams, the Masters Cup
and Davis Cup. The best players turn up for Indian Wells and
Miami because the prize money, the ranking points and the
competition are all good, but I still fancied my chances.

When I beat Nikolay Davydenko in the fourth round in
straight sets, I liked my chances even more, but during the
quarter-final against Tommy Haas of Germany I managed to
twist my ankle pretty badly in an awkward fall. It was the same
ankle I had hurt at Queen's in 2005 and every since then I have
worn an ankle brace when I play. I think it saved me from
doing some serious damage. I was able to win the match in the
final-set tie-break but the ankle certainly wasn't feeling too
good when I got up the next morning. I thought about pulling
out of the semi-final against Novak Djokovic but I was so
looking forward to the match that I wanted to give it a shot.

We were both nineteen years old and I was ranked one place
behind him at 14. It could have been one almighty battle, but
my best effort on a bad ankle wasn't good enough. I lost 2–6
3–6 and, although it may sound crazy to say it, I actually left
the tournament feeling pretty good. It was the first time I had
beaten so many top players in a Masters Series event and my
confidence was growing all the time.

Two weeks later I was in the Miami semi-final playing
Djokovic again, the perfect opportunity to reverse the score. It
didn't work out that way. This was the worst match I'd played
since joining the tour and I had no idea after the first three
games that it was going to run away from me so horribly. We
both held serve and I was 0–40 up on his next service game.
After that I just made loads of unforced errors, he hardly made
any and I didn't win another game. The scoreline 6–1 6–0 was
fully justified by the way I played.

What went wrong? I don't know. Some people thought
maybe that Djokovic was turning into my bogey player,
someone I would always struggle to beat. He had beaten me
once before at the Masters in Madrid in 2006 and was now
leading our head-to-head encounters 3–0. But that is not the
way my mind works. I just played a couple of bad matches
against him. I don't believe in bogey players. He's someone I
will play many times in my career, hopefully, and I don't plan
to see him win every match.

The switch to the European clay-court season from
American cement, not always a successful transition for me,
instantly brought me problems. I was playing in a doubles
match in Monte Carlo with Jamie when my back suddenly
went into spasm. I had noticed it was a little stiff before
we went on court but I didn't think it was anything serious.
It was an evening game, noticeably cold for Monte Carlo, and I
just couldn't get out of my chair after the first set.

Part of me really wanted to carry on. I never like letting
Jamie down in the doubles and we had already lost the close
first set 7–6. My mind was willing, eager to carry on, but my
body was stuck in that chair. I had to pull out of the match,
and the singles, and then take a little time off to recuperate.

I came back in time to play Rome, but only for one match
because I lost in the first round against Giles Simon of France.
It was the first time I'd lost a three-setter all year but I wasn't
really surprised given my lack of practice time going into the
tournament. A week later I was in Hamburg, with no clue, no
sign that half my season was about to be ruined by one shot.
My first-round match against Filippo Volandri coincided with
my twentieth birthday and my mum and gran came out with a
home-made cake to help me celebrate.

Volandri was a tough opponent. He had beaten Federer the
week before in Rome but I was playing really well and was up
5–1 in the first set when –
crack
– my right wrist just went. I
don't know how else to describe it. I'd never had pain like that
before in my life, it was just agony. I called the physio on to the
court straight away while Brad was telling me that I should just
get it strapped up and carry on. In retrospect, I saw his reaction
as yet another sign of mutual misunderstanding. At the time,
though, I was just in pain. I didn't know what to do. But the
tournament physio had strapped the wrist really tightly and I
tried to carry on. The next time I hit a forehand, the pain was
even worse than before and there was no way I could carry on.
I was really worried that by playing on I'd made the injury
worse. I have had a few pains in my time but this was the worst
I'd ever experienced by a long way.