Hitting Back (3 page)

I took a toilet break. One of the security guards had to keep
me company. I'll never forget him because all the time we were
walking, he was muttering: 'Come on, Andy. Come on, Andy.
You can do it!'

The fourth set was really close. I had chances. He had
chances. You'd think I'd be nervous at 4–4 in the fourth,
against one of the best players in the world, but actually it was
great. I'd never played anywhere near that level of tennis
before. Then I had a break point on his serve. He hit a shot on
to the baseline. The line judge called it out, but the umpire
over-ruled him. I knew it was in – I saw chalk – but it was one
of those that you hope the umpire will leave alone. He didn't.
I lost the game. I lost the set. It wasn't a mental let-down. It
was just inexperience. Nalbandian knew that the most
important thing to do was stay solid and make few mistakes. I
was more impetuous. I was in too much of a rush to finish off
the point.

He broke me early in the fifth set. To be honest, I can't
remember much about it any more. I was starting to hurt a lot
and I was cold. This was the last match on and it was getting
late. Whenever I stood up after the changeovers I was feeling
really stiff. My legs were hurting. It was the longest match I'd
ever played. My legs and my backside were really sore because
of the low bounce of the ball. All that bending. That was when
I understood what playing professional tennis at the highest
level was all about. I realised that I had the potential to play at
that level, but I was still a little kid.

In the locker room afterwards I saw Mark, my coach. We'd
hardly worked together for any length of time yet. I didn't
really know him that well. Both of us were trying to be brave
and hold back the tears. It was really difficult. I apologised to
him for losing and he looked quite shocked. He said: 'You've
nothing to apologise for. It was a great effort.'

I just sat there for about fifteen minutes by myself, trying to
take it all in. Actually, trying to get my legs working again.
When I went for my shower I could hardly stand up. My legs
buckled. I was absolutely exhausted, but somehow I gathered
myself. I went and did my press conference and that was –
nearly – the end of my first Wimbledon.

I say 'nearly', because I had to come back on the Monday to
play in the mixed doubles with Shahar Peer of Israel. She must
have wished I hadn't. I was rubbish. We lost in the first round,
but there was a huge crowd round Court Three where we
played. They told me later that it was the first time in living
memory that an unseeded player losing in the first round of the
mixed doubles had been asked to hold a press conference. It
was quite a fun conversation. They asked me about all the
female attention I was getting. I just said: 'That's the best thing
about this. It's great.'

I wasn't being strictly honest. The Nalbandian match hurt
for a few days but looking back on it now, it was the match
that made me understand what I needed to do to become one
of the best players in the world. It was maybe a good thing I
didn't win. I played really well all week and just lost to a better
player who knew how to pace himself. If I'd won in three or
four sets, I might not have realised I needed to be much fitter
and much stronger.

There was a pretty funny mixture of responses to what I'd
done. Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker, John McEnroe and
Martina Navratilova said encouraging things, which was nice,
but there were quotes in the papers from some former British
Davis Cup captains that were pretty critical.

David Lloyd said: 'For an 18-year-old kid to be getting tired
like that on grass is a big worry. Two weeks in a row, at
Queen's and Wimbledon, he got tired. The worst thing in
tennis is to have a weakness. Everybody else homes in on it
pretty quick.'

Tony Pickard said my temper was a problem: 'Obviously,
nobody has been able to bounce it out of him. Now it will be
a hell of a problem to get rid of it. To be doing that shows that
when the going gets tough, somebody can't handle it. He isn't
John McEnroe. He used it to break everybody else's concentration.
Murray is only breaking his own.'

Lloyd also said that Jimmy Connors had gone over the top
about me, 'saying Murray was the greatest thing since sliced
bread. He should not have made a comment like that about a
kid who didn't try in the fifth set against Nalbandian. You
can't say he is going to win a grand slam. But because we're so
desperate, he already has a noose around his neck.'

In some ways, they were right. I went away afterwards and
tried to grow up fast. I wanted to play at that level. Once
you get that sort of buzz from playing the biggest tennis tournament
in the world, you want to play that sort of tournament
consistently. You don't want to go back and play in Challenger
and Futures events, the lower-ranked tournaments, where
there's no one watching, no atmosphere and not that much fun.

You don't get Sean Connery phoning you after playing some
lowly event in South America. I didn't know he was in the
royal box that Saturday, but I saw it in the papers the next day.
Then he called me. I might have thought it was a wind-up but
my management company at the time had told me he'd asked
for my phone number – and anyway, I recognised his voice. It
was just like talking to James Bond.

I didn't do much of the talking. I just listened to that voice I
knew so well from all the Bond films I used to watch. Every
Christmas there was a two-for-one offer and I had built up the
entire set. Now, suddenly, after three matches at Wimbledon,
I'm having a conversation with 007 himself.

I was getting phone calls from James Bond and being
followed by the so-called paparazzi. I had gone from being an
absolute nobody to finding myself in the papers every day.
However, I didn't confuse myself with a national hero. I just
felt as if something had changed. I can tell you the exact
moment that that began to sink in. It was when I walked out
of our Wimbledon house with friends to have a day's go-karting
the day after the Nalbandian match. There was a line
of white vans with blacked-out windows outside in the street.
As our car pulled out, so did they and they followed us all the
way to the track. It was like being in a spy movie.

At the beginning of that year I had been really struggling. I'd
lost a lot of matches at senior tournaments. I didn't know if I
was going to make it. I didn't know if I was good enough. That
Wimbledon was where it all clicked. It was like a light bulb
going on. I'd started playing tennis when I was three years old,
and I'd made a lot of sacrifices over the years. I'd gone to
Spain, left my family, and it had been a long, long road – but
now I'd just played five sets in the third round of Wimbledon.
I'd lost but it was close. I didn't feel I had made it yet, but that
tournament was like a payback to me for all the hard times.

Now I had to start working even harder. I had to start
spending more time in the gym, being more professional. I was
eighteen and still physically under-developed. I was still
growing and hadn't put on much muscle. Basically, I just
needed to grow up and after that Wimbledon I did.

People think that I'm stroppy, that my mum's pushy and that
my big brother fancied his mixed doubles partner at
Wimbledon 2007. It just goes to show how appearances can be
deceptive, although I'm not so sure about Jamie and Jelena
Jankovic. But that's his story. My story is that I am not stroppy
at all. I can't remember the last time I had an argument with
my mum. I genuinely can't remember. I never slammed a door,
never shouted 'I hate you.' I never did either of those things to
my parents. I think Mum is the one person who gets me. She
understands me really well. I can't count the number of times
I've been called a bad-tempered brat, but that is not how it felt
growing up. I would say it was relaxed, easy-going, full of
sport and loads of fun.

Obviously I can't remember the very early years too clearly.
I can vaguely recollect playing swingball, but I can't picture a
time or place. I have a memory of going to France with Mum
and Dad, but nothing specific comes back to me except I can
remember a babysitter giving me a little sip of her coffee and I
spat it out. I've never touched coffee since.

*

I was born Andrew Barron Murray on the 15th of May, 1987,
in Glasgow. Only two weeks before, the family had moved to
Dunblane, a little cathedral town not far from Stirling which at
the time seemed very relaxed, very friendly and very safe –
except at Halloween when Jamie and I and our friends would
go out with our pals and throw eggs at people's houses.

I definitely cannot remember a time without Jamie, my elder
brother by fifteen and a half months. That's relevant because
growing up aged five, six, seven, eight, he was better than me
at stuff purely because he was older, stronger and cleverer. It
took me until I was ten to beat him at tennis and I've got a
funny fingernail to prove it.

We were playing in a national tournament for the Under-10s
at Solihull when he was ten, and we both reached the final. I
don't remember the match with any clarity, but what I do
remember is coming back home with him on the minibus with
all the Scottish players – there must have been about fifteen of
us – and I was winding him up about beating him. Mum was
driving. It was difficult for him to get away from it because I
was sitting beside him at the time with my arm lying on the
armrest. After about fifteen minutes of this, he'd had enough of
my goading. He shouted at me and his fist came down on my
hand. I got this huge whack on my finger which went black and
blue and I had to go to the doctor's for a tetanus injection the
next day. It never did grow back properly. So that was the first
time I beat Jamie in competition and that was my return for it.

I was obviously very competitive with him. That was why I
started to hate – I still hate – losing so much. My whole tennis
career happened purely because, when I was growing up, my
big brother was much better than me at most things. He was
better in school than me, he was better at tennis than me and
even when we pretended to be professional wrestlers, he only
ever let me win the Women's belts.

My mum, my first tennis coach, will tell you that when I
started playing tennis she thought I was useless. I was only
about three or four and she used to spend hours throwing balls
for me to hit. She says I kept missing whereas Jamie could do
it right away. It wasn't really until I was about seven that I
started to become noticeably better. I had bad concentration,
bad coordination and a temper. It was not a good
combination.

Gran tells me that regardless of whether we were playing
Snap, Monopoly or dominoes, I had to win at all costs. If
I didn't, I'd storm off in a terrible huff. I don't believe any
of this, but pretty much everyone in the family tells me the
same thing. They even tell me that Jamie used to let me win
things for a quiet life, but I don't believe that either. Maybe it
would have been just to shut me up but I don't remember
being that bad.

I suppose I was what you might call 'vocal' on the tennis
court when I was young. I have heard stories about me playing
at a junior tournament in Edinburgh and the father of the guy
I was playing was standing right behind the court, applauding
my double faults and cheering when I hit the ball out. I was
getting angrier and angrier. Mum and Gran had even started to
edge away because they could see what was coming and
wanted to pretend it was nothing to do with them.

I suddenly snapped, turned round and slammed a ball into
the netting where the man was standing. To all intents and
purposes, I was smashing the ball straight at him. Of course, I
got into trouble. The match was stopped, the referee was called
and Gran said she could hear me, even though she was hiding,
announce with some defiance: 'Well, I'm sorry, but I'm
not
sorry.'

Gran and Grandpa played a big part in my life for lots of
reasons. One was pure geography. We used to live about 200
yards from the Sports Club at Dunblane where the tennis
courts were. Gran and Grandpa lived about 200 yards in the
opposite direction. They used to pick us up from school,
drive us to training, and feed us tea whenever Mum and Dad
were out. Mum was usually working as a tennis coach by then
and Dad worked for the retail company, R.S. McColl.

I remember being around Gran a lot of the time. She ran a
toy and children's clothes shop in Dunblane high street and we
would often go there after school, play with the toys we didn't
consider embarrassing and see if we could tease some money
out of her for sweets. Most memorable were the car journeys
we took together. We make jokes about her driving to this day.
She used to indicate three miles before she had to turn off and
I've never seen her overtake anyone. It always used to take a
little bit longer to get anywhere in the car with Gran.

Another reason they play such a significant part in our lives
is probably their genes. Grandpa, Roy Erksine, had played for
Hibernian Football Club in the 1950s with some of the biggest
names in Scottish football at the time: Willie Ormond, Lawrie
Reilly, Eddie Turnbull, Gordon Smith, Tommy Younger.
Eventually he moved on to Stirling Albion (for £8 a week, and
£1 a point), at the same time working as a qualified optician.

There was sporting prowess on Gran's side of the family as
well. She had an English father who for some reason was called
Jock. Maybe it was because they lived in Berwick-on-Tweed,
right on the Scottish border. Jock Edney was a brilliant
sportsman. Gran says he was the Victor Ludorum of his school
for three years running, which is obviously a good thing, but
I've never been too sure what it means. I do know that he
represented the county of Northumberland at athletics, cricket
and tennis.

Gran's mother was a Scot, an Anderson, and a gym and
ballet teacher before her premature death when Gran was only
thirteen. A great-uncle once traced the name back as far as he
could go and found a connection with some Scandinavian
called Anderssen, but I think it might be pushing it to see me
descended from the Vikings just because of that.

Gran was sent to boarding school in Scotland, which is how
she met Grandpa and the first time she saw him was on a
Sunday afternoon covered in mud from a football match. She
remembers it clearly being a Sunday because his father was
very strict and thoroughly disapproved of him playing football
on the Sabbath. He did it anyway. Maybe that's where I get my
independent streak from.

Obviously growing up we all supported Hibs. I still do. We
used to go and watch games pretty often when we were young.
We even joined the Hibs Kids Club. I didn't enjoy it at first. It
always seemed to be freezing cold and wet and everyone
shouted and swore, but we got more into it over time.

Grandpa is really nice and really funny but when we were
younger, Jamie and I didn't always like him that much because
he was pretty strict and used to wind us up so badly. He'd say
things like: 'Tuck your shirt in' or 'Take your hat off.' No hats
were allowed indoors. Once we got a bit older, it started to
change and now we have a really good relationship with him,
but he used to give us a lot of trouble when we were boys.

He always loved dogs and he used to sit next to his Golden
Retriever saying to her things like: 'Pathetic little boy, isn't he,
Nina?' He also used to call me a 'little wart'. When I asked him
why, he said, 'You are something I'd like to get rid of but
can't.' Obviously, he didn't mean it – or at least I don't think
he did. He was just teasing me. He still does it sometimes, but
now I have the sense to laugh.

He was really keen on collecting old stamps and envelopes as
a hobby. I remember sitting in their living room watching
cartoons after school and Grandpa would be in the other room
at the huge table, fiddling about with his stamps. He is really
into it still and is pretty much an expert in postal history. He
didn't manage to get me interested though. Stamp collecting is
definitely not my thing. I was more into football stickers and
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I remember that dining table well for another reason: Gran's
Christmas lunch. She's a great cook, although she doesn't ever
make enough of it. It was fine when we were 10-year-olds but
she's been making the same amount of food through the years
and as Jamie and I have grown to 6'3", it seems as if it has got
less and less. We've usually finished ours before she has served
everyone else's.

I've seen a few pictures of us as children. There is one on my
website of Jamie and I wearing little Wimbledon tennis shirts
with rackets in hand, but we weren't really playing tennis. In
those days when we were really young, Mum would try and hit
our legs with a soft ball and Jamie and I would use the rackets
to try and stop it. She called it French cricket. We may have
been on a tennis court a few times, but we didn't start properly
until we were about five or six.

I'm told my first tournament was in Dunblane when I was
five and I went down south for the first time to play in an
Under-10s event in Wrexham when I was six. My mum thinks
it was a significant moment in my life even though it's a
complete blank to me now. Apparently, I had lost two one-set
matches to much older boys, but was leading 6–2 in the tiebreak
of my final match when a drop shot I'd played bounced
three times on my opponent's side of the net. As I walked up
to shake hands, the guy smashed the ball past me and claimed
the point. Nobody came to rescue the situation – we were
playing without umpires – and I never won another point. I
was absolutely distraught afterwards, but Mum reckons it
toughened me up. I made sure nobody ever cheated me that
badly again.

I have vague memories of playing for the Dunblane Third
Team when I was eight and my partner was a 51-year-old
architect called John Clark. Gran tells me that after a couple of
points, I went up to him and said: 'You're standing a bit close
to the net. You should stand back a bit because I want to serve
and volley and you'll get lobbed.'

I used to play for the men's team quite often and travel
around the Central District playing matches. I enjoyed it
because it was more challenging than playing at the club with
the other kids there, and I used to love beating the old men.
They didn't like it so much though and some of them tried to
introduce a rule at the district AGM that no kids under twelve
were allowed to play in the men's leagues.

The first tournament I remember winning was the Under-10s
at Solihull when I was eight. That was where I would beat
Jamie two years later. I always loved going down there. It
must have been a nightmare to organise because it was held
at seven different venues, with tournaments for the Under-10s
to the Under-18s, plus singles and doubles. I know that is
where I won my first prize money. £50 cash! I was so excited.
I came straight home and splashed out on computer games.

Everyone used to love it at Solihull. The courts were either
side of a car park where it was cool for me and Jamie to hang
out with the older boys. I must have liked it because I won
there every year from age eight to twelve. I don't remember the
score that first time when I was eight, but I know it was three
sets and Jamie had a cold. He kept coughing. I accused him of
doing it mid-rally to put me off. Somewhere we've got it on
video. It is really funny watching yourself that young. I see
things that I still do now. The fist-pump when I win points,
getting angry when I lose points, the number of times I bounce
the ball when I serve.

I used to bleach my hair blond in those days and keep it
really short. Sometimes it was spiky. Maybe I looked a bit like
Bart Simpson. I used to have a red jumper with a big Bart on
the front and there's a picture of me in it at my Mum's house
with a cheeky grin and teeth missing.

There are pictures of me and Abby too, my secret weapon
when I was ten. She was blonde and cute, and whenever I
played a tournament I used to cut off a lock of her hair to take
with me for good luck. Abby was the Golden Retriever pup
that Gran and Grandpa said was my dog, though she always
lived at their house. She is still alive and Gran had her portrait
painted one Christmas for my flat down in London. Although
she is getting on a bit now; her good luck has held pretty true.

At school I never really enjoyed studying. I loved doing
sports, but you did so few of them. We only had about two
hours a week. In the classroom I found it tough to concentrate
when all I was thinking about was playing football or tennis or
whatever it was. I always hated getting homework after doing
so much work in class. It didn't seem fair.

In the end, I took my exams in Spain not Scotland, when
I was playing at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona. I
don't know what my exact grades were. I wasn't that
interested. I did well in Maths and French. How I did well in
French, I shall never know. You learn stuff you're never going
to use, like what you have in your garden. I remember thinking
at the time how ridiculous that was. When are you ever going
to ask anyone about that?