Hitting Back (29 page)

Since then he's had the knee injury that kept him out for six
months in 2004 but that was also unfortunate in that he was born
with the bipartite patella and it was misdiagnosed as tendonitis for
several months. For all I know I have one too, but I never did well
enough as a sportswoman to have a single scan in my life.

I think people started to have a go about his fitness due to the
cramping issues at Queen's and Wimbledon in 2005, and that was
caused by a lack of understanding. Andy was perfectly fit for the
rigours of junior tennis, best of three sets and pretty small venues, but
the first time the cramping happened, he was playing a grand slam
champion on the show court at Queen's in front of television
cameras and a huge crowd, and he cramped up after waiting ages for
treatment when he went over on his ankle again.

The second time it happened was in the fifth set against a
Wimbledon finalist on the Centre Court at Wimbledon when he just
ran out of energy after so much physical and mental exhaustion. That
shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. It's normal It's happened
to loads of other players when they step up from juniors to seniors.
It happened to the Argentine junior, Juan Martin Del Potro, when he
was playing Fernando Gonzalez in the Australian Open 2007. It
happens. The only difference is that while the Argentines have a huge
press corps following their matches, they have more than one player
to write about.

I accept the fact that Andy will have to bear the burden of
attention alone, as Tim did for so many years. I think he has handled
it pretty well so far. I have just got to hope that some other British
players will push through in the next few years, because he is pretty
young to have to cope with all the attention by himself. I do wonder,
though, where the next generation is coming from. British tennis has
not always had the most healthy mentality. Sometimes it seems that
success just means everyone gangs up against you.

I remember Andy playing in the final of a junior tournament. He
was younger than the other players and I became very aware that
most of the audience were supporting Andy's opponent – not
because they wanted him to win, they just wanted Andy to lose. If
Andy played a great shot there was no recognition of it. When he
lost a point there was noisy applause. It was an unhealthy
environment. That's when I started to think that the best place to
survive would be out of it and Spain became the best option.

Being a tennis mum means more than just coaching. It is about
looking at all the pitfalls and trying to avoid them if you can. Some
people just don't seem to like visible tennis mothers. I remember the
flak that Gloria Connors used to get, but what a great job she did
with Jimmy. I admired her sense of determination and fighting spirit. I
also remember the way the cameras used to focus on her when she
was shouting: 'Go on, Jimbo,' in the crowd. I have learned over the
years to keep my mouth firmly shut. Actually I react immediately
when Andy hits a great shot, but by the time the cameras come to
me I've switched back to sitting there as neatly and quietly as though
I was related to the Henmans. It's a good trick and it works.

Naturally, not everything has gone quite so smoothly. We have
had some rough times. Andy's injuries have been little short of 'hell'
for the people around him, and one of those times was the wrist
injury in 2007 when he was struggling so badly to get back to form
that we arranged for him to see a sports psychologist.

Andy had started playing again in the August, having missed the
French Open and Wimbledon, and it was obvious he wasn't hitting
through the ball on his forehand side. He managed one win in Canada
against Robby Ginepri and then lost easily 6–2 6–2 to an Italian
qualifier that he would normally expect to beat. Watching him you
could see, he was very, very tentative. He was quite down about that.
The following week he went to Cincinnati and was absolutely
hammered in the first round by Marcos Baghdatis. When we talked
on the phone he said there was no point in playing any more matches
leading up to the US Open. He said he didn't feel confident about
hitting the ball. It wasn't a physical problem because the wrist wasn't
giving him pain. It was mental. That is when we organised the
psychologist, Roberto Forzoni who worked with West Ham United,
and it really seemed to do Andy good. It helped that Roberto knew
nothing about tennis so he talked about his feelings over many things
not just the injury itself.

One of the problems was that Brad wasn't understanding how
Andy felt about the injury. In Brad's mind it seemed to be a case
of: 'The wrist's fine now so get out there and do it.' It was an
unsympathetic response and Andy was really struggling with that.
Most of the time when they travelled it was just the two of them and
although the tennis expertise was great, there appeared to be little
emotional support. 'The wrist's repaired now. What's wrong with
you? Get going.'

I know that everything he did for Andy, Brad always believed was
for the best. But it was a business to him. Whereas to us, this is our
child, and good or bad, we will do whatever we can to help him get
better. It's not just about results.

If someone said to me: What was the happiest day of your life? I
think I'd have to pick three occasions when the boys have done so
well. The most excited I've ever been was probably the first Davis
Cup match Andy ever played, the doubles victory over Israel when
he was seventeen-years old and partnering David Sherwood. That
was just unbelievable. Then there was the Davis Cup tie against
Holland when both the boys were in the team at the same time. And,
of course, Jamie winning the Wimbledon mixed doubles with Jelena
– and Andy being so supportive of him – was incredible.

Now my ambition, apart from supporting Andy and Jamie in their
careers whenever they need me, is to establish my own indoor/outdoor
training centre in Scotland for players and their coaches. I
feel very passionately about tennis in Scotland. We've proved it
doesn't really matter where players come from. If they've got the
talent that is correctly developed, plus hunger and belief, coupled
with the right direction and the right opportunities, then it is possible
to produce world-class players.

It's a big challenge and it will need investment, but I'm hoping that
between the LTA, sportscotland and corporate sponsors, enough
funding will come forward to make it possible. Maybe a few years
down the line it is something that Andy and Jamie might be keen to
get involved with. Andy has enough on his plate right now but when
his playing career is over, I can see him playing a part.

Both the boys love tennis and just want to go as far with it as they
can. Jamie calls it 'living the dream', but I do worry about the weight
of expectation. What they have done is already pretty special, but I
think there is a general lack of understanding that there are a lot of
good players out there. Every match is tough at the top level. Andy
and Jamie are still very young, and they still have lots of improving to
do.

Just because someone like Novak Djokovic, younger than Andy by
a week, won the Australian Open in 2008 doesn't mean that Andy is
failing by comparison. It just means he's not ready to win a grand slam
yet.
I can see so many areas of his game that Andy can still develop.
He will improve, without doubt, because he's got a very exciting
game and a great tactical brain.

To me, it doesn't even matter if he never wins a slam. We would
love him to, but if it doesn't happen, he will still have been a top-10
player at a very young age and he has emerged from a small country
where tennis remains very much a minority sport. The future is bright
for both the boys as long as we're not too impatient.

It didn't seem too much to ask to have a relaxing holiday for a
couple of weeks at the end of a stressful 2007. Kim and I went
to Miami hoping to unwind and get some sun but it didn't
quite turn out that way because I spent two days in a hospital
bed hooked up to a drip. Some sort of food poisoning had
seriously dehydrated me, and the doctors didn't want to take
any chances. It was one way to relax, I suppose, but not quite
what I'd had in mind.

I then embarked on the most hard-working off-season I'd
every known. So-called 'Team Murray' was being assembled –
between track work and Bikram yoga with my new fitness
trainer Jez Green, and on-court training with my new tennis
coach Miles Maclagan, the winter in Miami went really fast.
The yoga was incredible. It's the most difficult thing I've ever
done because it's done at 42 degrees Celsius in a crowded
studio, and just trying to stay balanced is really, really tough.
Regular yoga looks just like stretching to me, whereas Bikram
yoga tests you to hold your posture and concentrate all the
time. A couple of times, Miles had to go out because he
thought he was going to faint.

Having finished the 2007 season so strongly, I wanted to
come back on even better form. There was no torture I
wouldn't consider, including track work for the first time in my
life. I'd done short, sharp sprints on a tennis court or running
on a treadmill, but with Jez I started doing some work on the
track at the University of Miami. He didn't really know what
to expect of me. He'd say: 'Let's just see what you can do.'
Then I'd do whatever it was and he'd say: 'Wow, I didn't think
you'd be any good at that.'

I think people underestimate my athleticism, but to play
tennis well, you have to be able to move well. We worked on
that in Miami. I'd never done a 400-metre sprint in my life and
so Jez set up my first session to run one 400m in under 80
seconds followed by an 80-second recovery – ten times in a
row. Each session, we lowered the time by a second. My best
was 75 seconds on, 75 seconds off.

That was tough, but the hardest session I've ever done was
twenty 100-metre sprints, completed in 15 seconds each with a
45-second recovery. Now that is ugly. There's a video of it on
my website and when it's over, I'm just lying down in a pool
of sweat on the track with my arms out in crucifixion pose.
When I stand up, you can see the imprint of my body on the
ground.

I've never worked so hard in my life as I did during those
weeks. We went to the gym, the track, the court, the yoga
studio and, despite all that, I still put on weight because I
started to eat much more than I've ever done. I was going out
to dinner and eating forty-two pieces of sushi. I was eating
massive amounts and snacking on balance bars (no bananas) to
supplement the meals. I was 80 kg when we started work and
by the end I was around 82 kg. Even now, I want to get
heavier, I want to weigh 85 kg soon, so maybe sixty pieces of
sushi is my target.

The one thing I won't do is bulk up on supplements. I've said
elsewhere that I'm worried about taking things that could
possibly make me fail a drugs test. These big pharmaceutical
companies have so many products going through their
laboratories and factories that there's always a slight chance
there might be some contamination. That's one of my biggest
fears. I'd hate to fail a drugs test. I don't really see how there's
any way back from that in sport and I probably wouldn't want
to play again.

I do take painkillers but I feel a bit uncomfortable about any
other medicines, because you just never know. When Marion
Jones was sent to jail for lying about taking drugs, I thought it
was absolutely pathetic. If you were to win on drugs, I don't see
how you could face your friends and family. OK, I'm sure you
could put on a front, but when you got back and looked at
yourself in a mirror, you must say to your reflection: 'What the
hell was I doing?' It's just pathetic.

So, it was without any outside assistance – apart from my
team – that I went to the Qatar Open in Doha for the start of
the new tennis season. I sensed I was in the best shape of my
life. I'd worked so unbelievably hard, the easy part was going
to be playing the matches. I'd taken the pressure off myself and
I felt ready to play good tennis.

My team that week – so much for my needing a minibus to
get them around – consisted of Miles, my coach, and Matt
Little, the fitness trainer I was leasing from the LTA. Kim was
there (her studying for an English degree does not exactly
qualify her as a tennis coach), also my brother, who was
playing in the doubles at the time, and Ross Hutchins, who was
playing in the doubles with me (not for long though, as we
were outplayed by the top seeds Daniel Nestor and Nenad
Zimonjic in the first round).

It was a good week. I played really well, winning one set 6–0
in each of the first three rounds. I knew I had to serve well, and
sending down eleven aces against Oliver Rochus of Belgium in
the first round told me I was on the right track. When I beat
Davydenko in the semi-final in straight sets, things looked even
better. I remember him saying I was difficult to play. He said I
seemed to find some special shots when I needed them and that
my slice to his backhand put pressure on him. That all sounded
good to me.

I played my friend 'Stan' in the final. It was my third meeting
with Stanislas Wawrinka, the Swiss Davis Cup player, and I
had never won before. It wasn't easy this time either. I had to
do a lot of running and it was a pretty tense match to begin
with, but after going up 3–0 in the final set with two breaks of
serve I won my fourth ATP title and collected the golden
trophy.

I spoke on the court after the final about why my game takes
a little longer to get together than most. I said that a lot of
people on the tour have basic games and it takes them much
less time to master their style of play. My game is quite complicated
and I always knew it was going to take a bit longer to
learn how to play the right way. It's taking me a bit of time,
but it's exciting.

That was the gist of my speech. It turned out to be a
premonition. I couldn't have guessed at the time that my results
in the first part of 2008 would be so up and down. Great
wins and tough losses kept alternating and I couldn't get a
momentum going. But I knew I would; it was just taking time.

I was looking forward to the Australian Open. It comes so
early in the year I'm surprised they don't give us Christmas
presents, but that didn't stop me playing well the year before.
I'd reached the fourth round and played probably the most
thrilling match of my life against Rafa Nadal. But this time I
was feeling good: I'd just won a tournament, I was ninth seed
and my first-round opponent was the unseeded Jo-Wilfried
Tsonga from Le Mans who everyone says looks like my hero,
Muhammad Ali.

They'd changed the surface since the previous year from
Rebound Ace to Plexicushion. I don't think it was the best of
ideas because now it's very similar to the US Open, but it is still
a surface that ought to suit me. I knew I had a good chance
against Tsonga. As it happened, he had a good chance against
me and emerged the winner 7–5 6–4 0–6 7–5.

Andy Roddick said after his match when he saw my result:
'I shudder to think what's going to be written about this
tomorrow.' I knew what he meant: the British media were
probably going to be hard on me after all the build-up. But I
had only lost a match and not that badly either – I won more
points than him (137 to 135), I won more games, and I had
more breaks of serve. I just didn't quite win the match, but I
ought to have done – Tsonga rushed the net over 100 times,
according to the stats; and by the end he could barely walk
because of cramp, although it was hard to diagnose because
he'd be hobbling one minute and then managing to chase down
every ball I played.

There was, I think, one point that changed the match. After
winning the third set 6–0, I had my momentum, and then I was
1–0 up in the fourth with a break point on his serve. I hit a
passing shot which nearly beat him, but he returned a reflex
volley that bounced off the net and fell on to my side of the
court. He went on and managed to hold that game. If I'd won
it, I think I'd have won the match.

I didn't play that badly. I didn't return the ball too well that
day, even though the return is normally the best part of my
game. Even so, it wasn't nearly as bad as in 2006, when I got
absolutely smoked in the first round. I was disappointed but I
wasn't panicking. I knew Tsonga had played really well and
I still came close to having my chance against him. In a way, it
gave me more confidence, not less.

I stayed for two or three more days in Australia. There was
no sense in giving up the sunshine too early to come back to
London in winter. For the last couple of years when I'd lost in
Melbourne, I'd been go-karting, but this time I just went to the
gym and practised. I had no urge to go and explore and I just
didn't have time. I was due to go to Argentina to play in the
Davis Cup and if I'd taken a week off to chill in Australia and
then tried to get ready to play in 30-degree heat on a clay court
in Buenos Aires, I couldn't have made the transition at all.

I suppose I should have taken even more heart from the fact
that Tsonga went right through the tournament and ended up
playing Novak Djokovic in the final. He didn't win that day
but the way he beat Nadal in straight sets in the semi-final for
the loss of only seven games made everyone think they'd found
a new star of tennis. Apparently he even received a good-luck
message from the new French president.

But it was Djokovic who emerged the new grand slam
champion and because his birthday is a week after mine, a lot
of people were saying that I had fallen behind. It's true he took
big steps forward in 2008. He played really well last year too,
reaching the semis of all the slams except Australia. He had
separated himself from the pack chasing Federer and Nadal,
the numbers one and two in the world. He was, for sure, the
stand-out third-ranked player in the world.

We're called 'friends', Novak and I, because we've known
each other since we were thirteen years old and we even played
doubles in the Australian Open one year. But I don't spend that
much time with him. He's obviously good for tennis and has a
lot of personality. He's known as 'the Djoker' and does a good
impression of Maria Sharapova, among others, at the player
parties. I'm not really into the party scene so I don't always go.
I missed the one in Monte Carlo because I was watching
Barcelona v Manchester United, the first leg of the Champions'
League semi-final, on the TV instead.

Meanwhile, it wasn't just me who was getting press
attention for supposedly 'falling behind'; questions were being
asked about the fitness of Roger Federer. I heard something
about glandular fever, but I wasn't certain and it wasn't really
my business. I did know that he had made it through to the
semis in Australia without dropping a set – that didn't suggest
a major loss of form. Djokovic obviously played well to beat
him in the semis, but that's men's tennis. It certainly didn't
look as though he would struggle for the rest of the year. If
Federer is the most dominant player in tennis history, one
defeat doesn't mean anything.

It was the same last year. He lost to the Argentinian
Guillermo Canas in successive tournaments in the States, and
everyone was saying: 'OK, that's it, Federer's struggling' and
then he made the final of Monte Carlo, won Hamburg, reached
the final of Roland Garros, won Wimbledon, the US Open,
Basle and the Masters Cup. Some struggle. I wouldn't mind a
year where I struggled like that!

It was around this time that I had a haircut. You may not be
able to believe that I can't pinpoint when, because quite a fuss
seems to be made about my hair, but I genuinely can't
remember. I just went to the hairdressers in my apartment
block in Wandsworth and asked for a trim. No big deal. It's
just hair, isn't it?

More important was the row that had blown up over the
Davis Cup and it's possible that I went off to the indoor
tournament in Marseilles determined to play as well as I could
and not be distracted by the fall-out from Argentina. Whatever
the reason, it seemed to work. I won there, beating Mario
Anaic, the 6'5" Croat (whose nickname is Baby Goran), in the
final, and broke into the top-10 again. I would have thought
that was good news for British tennis but some people hadn't
forgiven me for pulling out of the Davis Cup to protect my
knee condition. One newspaper headline asked: 'So Andy, how
is that knee doing?' The answer: OK, as long as I look after it.

After playing so well in France, I felt tired playing back-to-back
tournaments in Rotterdam and lost to Robin Haase, a
local hero, in the first round. Having inched up the ladder, I'd
gone down the snake again and was back down to 11 in the
rankings. There's no real excuse except the surface change
didn't help me. The court in Rotterdam was probably the
slowest I've played on since I joined the tour in 2005. I don't
understand why all the indoor tournaments are not played on
similar surfaces, but they're not. There's a lot of things i don't
understand about the tour. Maybe I will one day.

Next, we packed our bags again and headed for Dubai, the
tournament that all the top players make a point of playing
because of the appearance money. Nine out of the top eleven
players were there. I'm not against it. If a tournament really
wants you, they should be free to do whatever they can to get
you there. We were there in such numbers that – as an
unseeded player – I ended up playing Federer in the first round.

I liked my chances in this match, I really did. I was asleep
when the draw was done on Saturday. Someone sent the result
in a text which woke me up, and I looked at it and went back
to sleep. I wasn't worried.