Hitting Back (22 page)

Karting in
Melbourne, 2007.
Victorious, of course!

Cricked neck at Davis Cup,
Eastbourne, 2006. Had to sit out the
final day v Israel. With my friend and
physio Jean Pierre Bruyere

Debrief from Brad Gilbert after
Davis Cup singles v Netherlands, 2007

Qatar Open – my fourth title

Jo Wilfred
Tsonga – happier than I was
after the first round of the
Oz Open 2008

Marseille 2008 – ATP title number five

With Roger Federer
before our first round match
in Dubai, 2008

I can't say I hadn't been warned. I pulled out of the Davis
Cup tie in Argentina at the start of 2008, and everyone
around me had told me there would be 'repercussions'. I
heard that word over and over again and they were right.
There were repercussions – but not just in the way I
anticipated. My decision made a number of people very
unhappy. I was accused of being unpatriotic and selfish. I
took a lot of heat, but the one person I didn't expect it from
in public was my own brother.

The papers made it sound like a blood feud. 'Murray Boys at
War Over Andy's Failure To Turn Up'. He was furious with
me and the papers were full of quotes from him letting me
know how he felt. 'It was very disappointing news, obviously,'
he said at a press conference to the world's media just before
the tie in Buenos Aires. 'It was a shock to me and I think for the
team, it's also very disappointing. It's a shame that he decided
that it was best for him not to come here. It kind of affects the
way we feel about him.'

To be honest, I was shocked in return. I would never publicly
criticise my brother. I don't think it's the right thing to do. I'd
always be supportive towards him. That's why retaliation
never crossed my mind.

To put the whole thing in context, you have to understand
the Davis Cup. It is the only team competition in tennis and it
has been around for over a hundred years. Britain was pretty
good at it once. They won it nine times but, maybe not surprisingly
when you know the history of British tennis, the last
time was in 1936.

I'd played in seven Davis Cup ties and loved every one, but
the timing of the ties always seemed to cause a problem. Many
of the top players, like Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, hardly
played in them at all, but I had really tried to fit them into my
schedule because I always enjoyed playing them. People also
made it clear that it was important I played, not just for
patriotic reasons, but for practical ones. With the retirement of
Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, there was no other British
tennis player in the top–150 apart from me.

The tie against Argentina was Britain's first appearance in
the World Group for five years. We were already massive
underdogs. Argentina had won their ten previous Davis Cup
ties, nine of them by a score of 5–0. They were playing at
home, in front of their own crowd, on their favourite surface,
clay. The prospects did not look that great. Without me
playing – I am not being immodest, it is just a fact – the chances
for Britain were pretty well nil. They might have been nil with
me playing as well. Clay is probably my least favourite surface.

By coincidence, I was at the National Tennis Centre the day
the World Group draw was announced. I was just about to
leave when I heard someone say: 'Did you see the draw?
Argentina away!' They announced it with a groan, as much as
to say we'd got no chance. I thought it was such a bad attitude,
and typical. It doesn't fire up your enthusiasm to play. They
could have said: 'What a match! What a great opportunity to
beat Argentina!' They say the 'right' things in front of the
cameras and radio microphones, but away from the public
everyone was moaning that we had got no chance of winning.

So that was the background in the weeks leading up to the
tie. The majority of the team had already gone to a clay-court
training camp in Chile for a week at the start of February. I
was due to join them a week or so later, after the Australian
Open. In the end, my agent Patricio called John Lloyd, the
British Davis Cup captain, and told him I wouldn't be going.
Obviously, it caused a huge fuss. Maybe I should have done a
few things differently, but, even now, I don't regret the
decision.

I'd had troubles with my right knee, the one with the
bipartite patella, when I was warm-weather training in Florida
in December. I told my trainer and physio that it was getting
worse. We talked about it and I changed some exercises in my
programme because it was getting too sore. Some people may
doubt the truth of this and think the injury was just a convenient
excuse, but the fact is that my kneecap being in two
parts is a permanent condition, and the knee has to be protected
sometimes. I remember only too well how completely
miserable it was to miss half a season with a knee injury in
2004, and if I didn't protect it people would soon say I was
being irresponsible.

It is true that my knee wasn't really bothering me in
Australia, but I came back home after losing in the first round
and on the very first morning of practice I had to stop because
it was painful on certain movements. I saw the doctor at the
National Tennis Centre, I got a scan done, and I paid over
£1,000 for a machine that would supposedly help to reduce the
inflammation and help to knit the kneecap together. The
instructions were to use it every day for 150 days. That ought
to have been proof of a genuine problem, not some story I'd
made up about an injury. The scan results came back and they
confirmed what I felt. The inflammation was back.

At that point, I spoke to everyone around me. I wanted
honest opinions from them. The physio who did my rehab
when I first injured my knee in 2003 had said the worst
possible thing I could do while the knee was inflamed, was to
change surfaces. We – me, my current coach Miles Maclagan,
my fitness trainers Matt Little and Jez Green – sat round a
table at the National Training Centre and I said: 'Look guys,
I'm thinking of not going to the Davis Cup, what do
you
think?'

Everyone reacted the same way. They said they understood
how I felt, but it wouldn't be a good idea because of the
'repercussions.' Repercussions. Repercussions. I knew what
they meant. The rest of the team – my brother, Jamie Baker,
Ross Hutchins and Alex Bogdanovic – were already in South
America. I had known them all for years, I was friends with
three of them and I was related to the other one. They were all
expecting me to join them and they were going to feel let down,
as would team captain John Lloyd, if I didn't go.

So I agreed with everyone round that table. Yes, there would
be repercussions, but I asked them: 'Is that the most important
thing? What is the most important thing to
me
?' They all
agreed my health was the most important thing, bearing in
mind that the next few months were going to be pretty
stressful. I had a lot of ranking points to defend from last year
and I was due to play in Marseilles immediately after the Davis
Cup, followed by Rotterdam, Dubai, a month in America and
then the clay-court season in Europe.

They said: 'OK, we agree with you as far as that, but think
of the repercussions. The press are going to have a field day.'

I said: 'Yep, I absolutely agree, but let's write down the
positives and negatives.' The positives were easy to identify:
keep the team happy, keep the press happy, keep the Lawn
Tennis Association happy, keep whoever else happy. The
negatives were easy too: miss Marseilles, risk the knee flaring
up again, lose all my ranking points from winning in San José
in 2007, ranking inevitably dropping. There was one common
denominator. All the negatives affected me.

Even if I did play, Britain were not favourites to win. We
had, I reckoned, about a 5 per cent chance of winning the tie.
Argentina was on such a hot streak that they had whitewashed
nine of their last ten opponents and beaten the other one 4–1.
They were smashing everyone, and we had a much weaker
team than the ones they had been beating 5–0. Maybe I
wouldn't have won a match. They were some of the best clay
court players in the world, led by David Nalbandian, then
world number nine. And on top of that I would be under
pressure to fly between continents, with the time changes and
different surfaces, and then win three matches.

So I thought it through and saw pretty clearly that all the
positives were to keep other people happy. All the negatives
were about what could actually happen to me. At the end of
the meeting – and I discussed this with my mum and Patricio
too – everyone said that as long as I was happy that I could
handle the repercussions – them again – I should pull out.
Definitely in terms of looking after my body and my tennis,
they thought it was the right decision. So I made it.

Maybe it was a selfish decision, but when I'd played in the
Davis Cup in the past I'd always given 110 per cent. I felt I'd
done my bit and I know from experience that you can't please
everybody all the time. If I'd aggravated my knee or if my
ranking had dropped down to 20, people would have had a go
at me for that. So it is ironic that by not going to the Davis
Cup, by winning Marseilles and keeping my ranking up, people
still had a go at me.

I felt like telling them it's not just my fault the team lost. I
shouldn't be the only player that can win matches for Britain.
It isn't just up to me. There are other players in the team who
should be winning matches. It's tough if I am expected to win
all three of mine every time. The one thing that was pretty
hurtful during this whole episode was when people said I
wasn't committed to my country, when everyone who knows
me will tell you I'm one of the most patriotic people you will
meet, for Scotland
and
Britain.

I'd competed for Britain in various European and world
junior championships since I was about fourteen and always
loved it. If you see the way I reacted when I won my first Davis
Cup match in Israel in 2005, you wouldn't tell me I don't love
playing for my country. It was one of the best experiences I've
had in my entire career. Another Davis Cup tie in 2006 against
Israel, this time at home, was the only occasion I'd come back
from two sets to love down and won in five. The Cup really did
mean something to me.

However it is not like other tournaments. Emotionally and
mentally, playing Davis Cup is more tiring than anything else
including the grand slams. Even when you are not playing
matches, you are there supporting your team. I love being part
of a team, but it is a completely different dynamic to being at
a tournament on your own where you can dictate when you
practise, when you rest, when you eat, and all the rest of it.

My experience was that playing Davis Cup left you pretty
drained, mentally and physically, the following week. I'd never
done well after a Davis Cup tie, except in 2005 when I went
straight from playing Roger Federer in the doubles match
against Switzerland to playing Roger Federer in the singles
final at Bangkok. Every other time, something has gone wrong.

After the tie against Holland in 2007 which we played on an
indoor hard court in Birmingham, I went straight to practise on
clay for Monte Carlo and got injured. After the Ukraine match
in 2006, which we played on clay outdoors I took three flights
in twenty-three hours to get to Asia and lost in the first rounds
of Tokyo and Bangkok. During our home match against Israel
at Eastbourne in the summer of 2006, I hurt my neck diving for
a ball and I had to miss the tournament the following week,
and in Glasgow a few months earlier against Serbia and
Montenegro, I was so sick I probably shouldn't have played,
but I didn't want to let anyone down and then it took me ages
to recover from it.

You would be pretty stupid not to look at these experiences
and gather that there was a problem. I was looking at it from
my perspective, I admit that, but if you want to win in sport
you have to look out for yourself. Nobody else will. I was
imagining what would happen if I had been asked to play all
three days in Argentina, which was likely. I would have had to
play two singles and a doubles, up to five sets each on clay, and
then fly out on Sunday evening – if the match finished on time
– from Buenos Aires to Marseilles.

It would have been unbelievably tough to have played
Marseilles after three matches in the Davis Cup. I wouldn't
have won, not after an overnight flight, losing four hours in the
time change, playing a first round match on the Wednesday
and then playing every single day if I wanted to reach the final.

In retrospect, maybe I should have called John Lloyd myself
straightaway when I made the decision. I spoke to Patricio and
said I thought I should call him. He said he would buzz him as
time was tight and I could speak to him the next day. I was
hoping that when I spoke to John everything would have
cooled down a little. I don't think that was cowardice, I think
it was practical. I have often preferred to wait until people have
calmed down before I talk through a problem. I didn't expect
it to become such an issue.

I've always got on well with John, he's a really, really fun
guy, but I knew how much everyone would have loved to win
that tie. At least be competitive. I was well aware he was going
to be disappointed.

Personally, I think the criticism about not phoning him first
was exaggerated. It wasn't as though my decision was a secret.
I'd spoken about my knee problem to Ross Hutchins, I'd
spoken to the team doctor who had arranged the scans and I'd
spoken to the team physio who was treating my knee and who
was also out there with the team. It isn't as though I went into
hiding. I'd spoken to quite a few people who were in the perfect
position to explain the situation to John.

I can see that people might think it was me avoiding
responsibility. I can only say that that wasn't my intention. If
anyone thinks I am a coward about things, they obviously
don't know me. Since the age of fourteen I have been making
way harder decisions about people who are much closer to me
than John. That is, when I broke up with my first coach, Leon.
Then I spoke to him face-to-face because I thought that was the
better way to handle it. When I stopped working with Mark
Petchey, I handled that face-to-face too and that was really
tough because we had been really close.