The making of Murray

Published on Saturday 29 August 2009 20:28

AS HE savours the prospect of a US Open semi-final between his countryman Rafael Nadal and former protege Andy Murray, William Pato Alvarez's mind wanders back to the day when he first started working with Murray at the Sanchez-Casal Academy outside Barcelona six years ago. The Scottish teenager had arrived a year before as a callow 15-year-old, and it was already clear to the veteran Spanish coach that he had a player of exceptional quality on his hands.

"By the time I started working with him he was very, very good already," says the man who coached the Spanish national side for 20 years and who masterminded the rise of many of the current crop of outstanding Spaniards. "I started coaching him at 16 and already he was the best player at the academy. I've worked with (Illie] Nastase, (Emilio] Sanchez-Vicario and (Maria] Sharapova, and he is better than any of them.

"I've had big problems in Spain this week because I said that Andy is the world's No.1 player, that he is already better than Nadal. He is faster than him, can volley, has a better drop shot and serves better, where Nadal just has a good forehand and backhand and that's all."

If Pato Alvarez's views are anathema to Spaniards, they are gaining currency elsewhere. John McEnroe has tipped the Scot to win his first Grand Slam at Flushing Meadows, and while the bookies think he won't have enough in the locker to beat Federer if they meet in the final, they do have him down as the overwhelming favourite to beat Nadal in their scheduled semi-final contest.

The reasons for Murray's stellar rise are no secret. Talking to people who have watched Murray develop down the years, the same themes recur time after time. They're about a player who is fearsomely competitive and self-confident, has a ferocious work ethic, is blessed with extraordinary hand-to-eye co-ordination, and has an innate sense of how to beat bigger, stronger players.

"Andy had the best hand-to-eye co-ordination I've ever seen in a player of that age," said Martin Kilday, who coached at the David Lloyd Centre in Renfrew and worked with Murray for two years when he was ten and 11, "and he had a natural tennis intelligence. Even at that age he could figure out a way to beat older, stronger juniors and he has taken this ability into the professional game.

"But it's also important to remember that Andy had some big advantages over other young players. For a start, his mother Judy was, and is, a hugely knowledgeable coach. Just as importantly, his brother Jamie was a top junior so Andy always had someone who could really stretch him in practice."

While she makes no apologies for ensuring that he made the most of his talent, Judy Murray doesn't argue with that assessment. No one is more aware of the advantages that Murray enjoyed than his mother. A former national coach, she is painfully aware of the deficiencies of a tennis system in Britain that is awash with cash thanks to Wimbledon, but where only kids who come through private systems like the David Lloyd Centres have made any headway.

"There had never been a quality coaching system or a dedicated tennis training centre in Scotland and as only one per cent of the population plays tennis, it was and still is very much a minority sport," she says. "Andy was one of the youngest of a pack of under-12s who I targeted when I started to work as national coach in 1994. Others included Elena Baltacha, Colin Fleming, Jamie Baker and Jamie (Murray], who have all become full-time tennis players and represented Britain in the Davis and Federation Cups."

Yet even though Judy says her youngest son "has a massive strength in that he always had enormous belief in himself, especially after he won the unofficial world under-12 title at the Orange Bowl in Miami in 1999", she is still uncomfortably aware that had he stayed in Britain he may not have been so successful.

It was a chance conversation with one of Murray's fiercest rivals in the professional game that changed the course of his career. "It came about after a game of racketball with Rafael Nadal at a junior tournament in February 2002," says Judy. "Rafa was telling Andy that he trained with then world No.1 Carlos Moya at a tennis academy in Majorca and did very little schooling. Andy decided he needed to do something like that if he was going to keep up with the rest of the pack and so we started to look at academies in Spain. He chose the Sanchez-Casal Academy."

Once there, it channelled Murray's naturally competitive nature, reinforced his mental strength and set him on the path to becoming the best Scottish tennis player of all time. "In Barcelona he was able to train outdoors on clay with a huge number of like-minded players, junior and senior," says Judy. "But the main thing was that he was a small fish in a big pond. In Britain it's too easy to be a big fish in a small pond."

While Judy happily concedes that "it's one thing to be talented and quite another to maximise that talent – that takes sacrifice, dedication and hard work", she also concedes that many talented would-be champions have never had the option of making the necessary sacrifices. That knowledge has been behind her decision to use her son's legacy to set up the same sort of tennis school in Scotland that acted as a springboard for Murray's climb to the top of the world game. In the same way that a role model like Bjorn Borg spawned a generation of Swedish tennis stars, Judy hopes to provide an environment where Scottish youngsters inspired by her son's feats will have a system capable of turning talent and enthusiasm into top players.

"We are just very short of quality facilities in Scotland," says Judy, who points out that there is not one outdoor court of the same surface as the US Open in Scotland, just one clay court venue and only 32 indoor courts in the whole country. Her plan to counteract a general dearth of facilities, coaches and activity revolves around "building a tennis hub in the central area with a community club at the heart of it and a first-class team of coaches servicing the local clubs and schools. The club would have indoor and outdoor courts and a vibrant social membership. There would be a tennis academy within that so that I can pass on my experience to both coaches and promising players." The facility is planned and costed, with several sites under consideration and a provisional opening planned for the summer of 2012.

Her son may be busy flying the flag for Scotland at Flushing Meadows this week, but he is an enthusiastic advocate of her plan. Even though Murray has only just turned 22, his mother is already beginning to think about his legacy. If her son was an almost uncanny collision of talent with circumstance, then she knows there's no time to be wasted if we're to create a conveyor belt of Andy Murrays.