Andy Murray interview: Net gains

Published on Friday 5 June 2009 13:22

It has to be admitted that the press are sometimes guilty of hanging make-do personalities round celebrities' necks like dead albatrosses: they carry the weight everywhere and the smell lingers even if they manage to shake the corpse off.

Scottish tennis star Andy Murray's albatross has been a kind of tennis pro version of Harry Enfield's Kevin the teenager: a surly, stroppy kid who stomped round court shouting at referees. The grungy chic style of dress didn't help, what with shorts drooping to his knees, oversize T-shirts drowning his rangy frame, and back to front baseball caps pressing down on unruly curls. Even at neat little short-back-and-sides Wimbledon. But Murray's not even a teenager any more so what's he like really?

In Avenue George V, just off the Champs Elyses, a crowd has gathered in the dry dusty heat of the afternoon outside Paris's exclusive Four Seasons hotel. People keep asking who owns this extensive luggage being loaded into waiting cars blocking the street – obviously everyone's waiting without knowing why – but je ne sais pas and my schoolgirl French gives up when one man launches into animated explanation. Not Murray anyway, who is staying in the same block but round the corner as he prepares for the French Open. I guess he'd have the money for the Four Seasons but it's a bit flash. His less famous hotel charges eight euros for a small coffee with a 'free' two-bite (one if no-one's looking) biscuit, so safe to say our boy's not exactly slumming it. But it seems fitting when, during conversation, Murray defends Gordon Brown. Both are reputedly dour. Prudent. Very Scottish. Neither seems likely to top the YouTube smile poll.

"I'm not too into politics," Murray says. (No chance of him becoming an MP – he's reputed never to travel first class.) "It was just that I met him and everything I spoke to him about, he was so nice. Very polite, very clever, and he obviously worked incredibly hard. All you read about is how he does such a bad job. He can't win. Everyone just focuses on the negative."

Always fascinating to see whether a person's public image fits like a glove or wrinkles uncomfortably. Murray's now 22, ranked world No 3 behind Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, and what he actually transmits in conversation is not surliness at all but a very focused politeness. Frankly, I think he's bored by interviews – his interests are all active and he hates reading – but he listens to each question with great concentration and then tries to kill any pace in it before lobbing the answer over your head to the baseline. He's very cautious which is interesting in a winner. But perhaps 'controlled' is a better word.

So controlled that in the run-up to the interview he actually asks his PR to arrange copy approval. (Well he can ask.) It's a highly unusual request that not even wily old stalwarts of the entertainment industry, like Tom Jones or Petula Clark, make. What's gone wrong that a 22-year-old tennis player feels the need? His predecessor as British No 1, Tim Henman, had that clean cut, take-home-to-mum look that made him everybody's darling. Murray is more quirky, more challenging, less easy, and he's paid a price for an undercurrent of dry humour, particularly that joke about supporting anyone but England in the World Cup.

Murray looks slightly taken aback when asked why he wanted copy approval. Does he always need to be in control? No, he says uneasily. "The Scotland England thing," he continues in explanation, "I was sitting doing an interview for TV with a guy and he asked me, will you be supporting Scotland in the World Cup, ha, ha – jokingly – knowing Scotland weren't in the World Cup. And then he asked who I would be supporting and I said anyone except England – ha, ha." The good-natured exchange became blown up as some anti-English outburst. "You have to be careful," says Murray.

Caution, control, discipline … they can be as important as talent and flamboyance. In the end, disappointment for Murray comes in the quarter finals of the French Open but clay is not his surface and he is more confident on grass. After years of over hyped expectations, perhaps this year is the first that Murray really is a contender for next month's Wimbledon. He's had a meteoric year getting to No 3. How much higher can he go?

The interesting thing about the tennis-playing Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, and the Murray brothers (Andy's older brother Jamie is a Wimbledon doubles champion), is the question it begs: are great players born or created? "Created," insists Murray. "I don't think you are born to do anything. You can have talent but it takes hard work and sacrifice and discipline to get to that level and I think that's what any of the best tennis players say if you ask them – hard work is the difference. There are so many good juniors who haven't made it to seniors, and it's down to motivation and work ethic. The guys at the top of the game are the ones who work the hardest."

Personality as much as talent is critical in champions. Jamie has the reputation of being more sociable and less driven than his brother and once said he didn't have his rage. Does it feel like rage inside Andy? "No, I don't think it's inner rage that guides you to be the best. It's not something where you can't control your emotions. It's having the drive to be the best you can be." So is he a better player than Jamie or just a different player? Perhaps the question is slightly mean because the rankings are perfectly clear – but I ask it wondering if Murray will feel any reticence about asserting himself over his brother. "No, I'm better for sure," he says instantly. His mother, Judy, is on record saying Andy always had incredible levels of self belief.

Jamie was better than him when they were younger, acknowledges Andy, which makes you wonder how important being the second son was in developing his talents. Some psychologists argue birth order is important in determining siblings' personalities and certainly younger brothers sometimes feel the need to prove themselves against the old king, while older ones want to squash the young pretender. "It was good motivation for me to keep getting better," Murray admits.

The brothers grew up in Dunblane where there was really no-one else to play against. They only had each other. But their competitive relationship changed as they got older. "Once you get to 15 or 16 there's no jealousy. Jamie went to train in Paris and I went to train in Barcelona and we were travelling to different tournaments and saw very little of each other. When you get separated, you start being more supportive. I was more emotional when Jamie won his first tournament than when I won. I won singles and he won doubles straight after. I'm Jamie's number one fan and always will be."

Just as the Williams sisters' father was key in their development as players, the Murray brothers' mother, Judy, a former player and Scottish coach, was instrumental in theirs, although she stopped working with her sons when they were 11 or 12. "Mum was always there to support us but it wasn't like she needed to coach us. She let go which I think was important." Everyone knows about Judy's influence. But what about his dad's? "I think for tennis, mum was important but my brother and I as people … my dad has to take a lot of credit. I'm sure he's happy with the way we have handled ourselves. I'd chat to my mum about tennis, and with my dad I'd play golf and football. He's very relaxed but if he had to, he disciplined me and Jamie. No swearing and stuff. He was a great parent, very laid back, but looked after us and made sure we weren't doing anything silly."

His parents divorced but his dad still shared their upbringing. "It's not the nicest thing anyone has to deal with and I'm sure it would have affected us in some way but me and Jamie were very young when it happened. It's hard to know how much of a difference it makes, but it wasn't something that scarred me, I wouldn't say." Neither did being caught up in the Dunblane massacre. Commentators sometimes suggest it influenced him as a person and player, but almost as interesting as what happened to him that day is the fact he's always been so reluctant to talk about it. Why is that? "It's not one of those things that many people like to talk about but the thing is as well that I don't really remember. I was seven years old at the time, so it's not like I understood what was happening. You can't grasp things like that." He doesn't associate that day with fear? "No. Looking back it's terrible, but not many people can remember what happened at that age. I was so young I couldn't understand what a big deal it was. If it happened now I would be devastated, but I can't remember."

He says he wasn't much of a scholar and childhood was crammed with every possible sport. It gave him a sense of pride, a way to define himself. He loved being able to bring a trophy back to school. "It wasn't showing off. It was just nice to have something you had achieved." Say what you like about taking part being the important thing. It's the winning Murray always loved.

It was he who chose Barcelona to train. "I went to London and trained there for a week and didn't enjoy it. When you work with the national team you spend your whole time playing with the best players of your age in Britain and there's a lot of sort of jealousy. There's too much negativity. You are travelling together as a team and a lot of the guys are wanting each other to lose. You also don't get the opportunity as much to practise with guys who are older than you. When I went to Barcelona at 15 I was getting to train with guys who were 20, 21 years old and ranked 200 in the world, which is much better than training with the No 1 in the under-16s in Britain."

Even back then, Murray was independent and emotionally resilient. "I never got homesick. You just have to learn to look after yourself a bit. I had to learn a new culture and make new friends and be on my own a bit. You don't have people there to stick up for you. It was the best preparation for my career because I just became more independent and took more responsibility for what I did."

This time last year, it was said Murray had brilliance but not yet strength or consistency. After such a successful year, has he proved himself? "I don't necessarily feel I have to prove it. I kind of wanted to do it for myself and I guess the guys I worked with." But if he never rises above No 3, will that be failure? "No, no. Getting to number three in anything you do is great and I've got the two best players of all time in front of me. If I don't achieve anything else, it won't be through lack of trying."

There is a tendency to declare each new champion the greatest ever. It happened with Borg, with McEnroe, with Sampras, and now with Federer and Nadal. But Federer and Nadal are undoubtedly special and Murray has beaten both of them – just not when it mattered in a Grand Slam. There's a mental leap required there, he agrees. But no, he doesn't feel fear on court. "You get nervous. Anyone who says they don't is lying, but it's not fear." Personally, he finds Nadal the tougher challenge. "I think Nadal is the best because of the way he competes. Federer is obviously unbelievably talented and has all the shots, but Nadal wants to win every single point. He is No 1 in the world right now, but he still practises so hard and gives 110 per cent."

Murray is on the way up with everything to gain and that's when you're freest. Federer is already the old guard with everything to lose. He dominated tennis for four years, seeming to relish his position as he turned up in his fancy, handmade champion's jackets at Wimbledon. Young Turks tend to have more ambition, more ruthlessness. Interesting, then, to know how much sympathy Murray felt when Federer broke down in tears earlier this year after losing the Australian Open to Nadal. (He had already lost the previous Wimbledon to his Spanish rival.) Federer seemed humiliated by defeat while Nadal responded with the trademark humility he displays off court but certainly not on it.

Murray hesitates. He would prefer – as he's sure Federer would – that it hadn't happened. "It's not that it shows a weakness, it's just that it shows something has really got to you. I guess that's why you want to keep your emotions in check as much as possible. After that, everyone started saying, is he starting to lose it a little bit? Has Nadal got his number? It wasn't the worst thing that can happen on court because it showed he obviously cares a lot about what he's doing but I think it showed frustration as well. He's very close to equalling Sampras's record of Grand Slams and I'm sure that was part of it." The three men at the top, Murray thinks, are all quite different personalities.

Years ago, when the teenage Murray was just emerging, a sports journalist told me if I ever got an interview with him I should be nice to him. He was basically a good kid but there was a lazy shorthand used to represent him. In the run-up to the interview, I wondered if his head had swollen in the intervening years. Securing an interview with Osama bin Laden would have been easier. Arriving in Paris, the exact time and location for that day's interview still hadn't been confirmed. But then Murray had loped in amiably and said, with that particular relish young guys have when they talk about food conquests, that he'd managed to snaffle two plates of pasta, and I saw what my colleague meant. The watchful eyes, the guarded unease … there's a sense of someone simply trying to push back the storm around him and retain something of himself.

If there's control, there's also drive. The gruelling tennis year starts early in January, with the last tournament at the end of November. Is it, perhaps, an indication of the stresses involved that a few drugs cases have hit the tennis headlines? Performance enhancing drugs are not a problem, Murray believes, though the rules are so stringent people sometimes get caught out. One tennis player who simply forgot to renew a form for an asthma inhaler he's used his entire career failed a test when he wasn't doing anything wrong.

But both Roger Gasquet and Martina Hingis have been caught up in cocaine scandals. "I think drug taking is terrible and I would never want anyone close to me in my family to do it," says Murray carefully. "I can't talk for anyone else but you have a responsibility, because you are in the public eye and the media are around, not to do those sorts of things …. falling out of nightclubs at two and three in the morning. There's obviously a lot of pressure and guys need to let their hair down sometimes, because you put such a lot of work into preparing for tournaments that when they're finished you just want to relax and live a kind of normal life. Unfortunately, sometimes guys take it too far."

Murray has had a long-term relationship with girlfriend Kim Sears, but how hard is it to maintain that? "I find it very easy. I think it would be harder if I spent my whole time at home. Like I said earlier about my brother, if I spent two or three months away from him, when I did spend time with him, it was great. If I spent three months with Jamie from today until after Wimbledon, 100 per cent we would be arguing by the end of it. I just think if you spend time apart, the time you do spend together is quality time. You don't spend it bickering and whingeing about stuff and youtry hard to make it work. I see Kim a lot. But if I was at home and we had to see each other every single day you'd just have more arguments and more chance for things to go wrong."

Perhaps not the most romantic thing he could say but pragmatic. Anyway, what he lacks in the grand gesture he makes up for with constancy. "I like to think I'm quite a loyal person and I don't like partying and what not. It's been three and a half years with Kim and that's quite a long time for someone my age. I like being in a relationship. I think that's kind of how I function best."

There will, of course, be the usual furore over Wimbledon next month when Murray will be forgiven for his supposed slight of the English and clasped to the nation's bosom, heaving with hope that he will be the first British male winner since Fred Perry in 1936. People assume Wimbledon is the Grand Slam he really wants. Is it different from the others? "Yeah. There's a big difference just purely because it's at home and you have this huge support there." But truthfully he'd take any Grand Slam – just as soon as he can nudge Nadal and Federer out of the way.

If Murray ever becomes No 1, checks in to the Four Seasons, the most important thing in his own book will be not to change. Ask him to define himself without referring to tennis and he says he just wants to be close to family and friends. "Tennis is a huge part of my life, but if I couldn't play tennis again I hope I would still enjoy my life with the people I have around me." He wants normality. "Tennis," he says, "is not the most important thing."