Hitting Back Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One: The Two Imposters

  Chapter Two: But I'm Not Sorry

  Dunblane

  Chapter Three: El Kid

  Picture Section 1

  Chapter Four: The 100 Club

  Chapter Five: The Brit Awards

  Tim Henman

  Chapter Six: The Year of Living Controversially

  Picture Section 2

  Jamie

  Chapter Seven: Can I Also Ask You This?

  Chapter Eight: We Are In Hell Right Now

  Picture Section 3

  Chapter Nine: Repercussions

  Mark Petchey

  Chapter Ten: One and One

  Judy Murray

  Chapter Eleven: Team on Tour

  Chapter Twelve: Me

  HITTING BACK

  ANDY

  MURRAY

  HITTING BACK

  The Autobiography

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781409036050

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Century 2008

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright © Andy Murray 2008

  Andy Murray has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  Century

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781409036050

  Version 1.0

  To all my fans – for all the support you have given me through the good times and the tough times.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to – my family for keeping me grounded.

  To my mum and dad for always encouraging me to pursue my tennis career.

  To all my coaches for helping me to get to the level I'm at – Leon Smith, Pato Alvarez, Mark Petchey, Brad Gilbert – and to everyone who is with me now – Miles Maclagan, Matt Little, Jez Green, Andy Ireland and Alex Corretja.

  To Tennis Scotland, Sportscotland, Scottish Institute of Sport, the LTA, RBS, Robinsons and Edmund Cohen for providing the funding and support I needed to train in Spain.

  To all my sponsors for their continued support – RBS, Fred Perry, Head, Highland Spring and David Lloyd Leisure.

  To my agent Patricio Apey and Ace Group for taking care of business.

  To Rob Stewart, my website editor, and everyone who gets involved with www.andymurray.com

  To my former physio Jean-Pierre Bruyere for taking such good care of me and teaching me how to look after my body.

  To Sue Mott for all her help in the writing of this book.

  And to Kim, Carlos and Dani for always being there when I need them.

  HITTING BACK

  Chapter One:

  The Two Imposters

  Kipling's wrong, by the way. You can't treat them exactly the same, Triumph and Disaster. I don't. Triumph is clearly better. I have never liked losing. When I was a little boy I'd overturn the Monopoly board in a rage if I was losing – so my gran tells me anyway – but you could say I have matured with age. I understand I'm not going to win every tennis match I play. I come off the court and I'm disappointed, but I don't beat myself up over it. I'm competitive, I want to win, but I'm not an idiot.

  I wanted to win that day I stood under the Rudyard Kipling quote at the entrance to the Centre Court at Wimbledon for the very first time in my life. There's hardly a more famous spot in the whole tennis world. You don't even have to look up to know that it's there . . .

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.

  It was my first Centre Court match, at my first Wimbledon, in my first grand slam against a man who had played in a Wimbledon final. Oh, and ten million people were watching on television and I had this massive bag of drinks over my shoulder that was way too heavy to carry.

  I had been sitting in the champions' locker room when they came to get me for the match. It wasn't a mistake. I was allowed to be in there because I'd been part of the Davis Cup squad for Britain, but it was seriously weird being there, with attendants offering you towels and John McEnroe doing stretching exercises on the floor. The walk from the locker room to the court just made things even more unbelievable.

  The corridor was lined with framed photographs of all the former champions. Some I would play against one day – and one day surprisingly soon – like Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt. One I had already played against, no less a hero than John McEnroe who had deliberately ignored me the first time we met. Some had been runners up, like my childhood hero Andre Agassi – I used to own a pair of pink Lycra and denim shorts thanks to him, which may not be something to boast about. Some I had loved watching on TV like Björn Borg and Jimmy Connors. Others I only knew about from the history books, like Fred Perry, who as everyone knows – because we are always being reminded – was the last British man to win Wimbledon in 1936. That's a very long time ago. Now I was walking down the corridor, listening to 'Let's Get It Started' by Black Eyed Peas on my iPod, reckoning it was probably too soon for me to change all that.

  I was eighteen years old – just – and this was about to become the most amazing time of my life. We walked past the back entrance to the royal box. Sir Sean Connery was in there, but I didn't know it at the time. We were led down a set of stairs beside the trophy cabinet, through the main hallway and then, just to maximise the intimidation, they made me stand underneath that famous Kipling sign carved over the doorway.

  All the names of all the Wimbledon champions were lettered in gold on the wall next to me. A television camera was pointing at my face and my opponent was standing there with me, obviously much more relaxed than I was, having played on the tour for eight years, an established top-10 guy. As competitors go, David Nalbandian was a heavyweight. No one said anything. It took an effort to believe this was actually happening.

  I love boxing and sometimes tennis is pretty similar. No one gets punched in the face, but waiting to go on court was like waiting to walk into the ring. The two of us would go out together, but only one of us would survive.

  This was my first Wimbledon – my first Wimbledon as a senior professional. I'd played the junior tournament three times before and lost twice in the first round. It wasn't exactly my most successful stomping ground; I'd never played well there. I'd never really played well on grass before. It was only my third senior tournament and here I was, about to play on some of the most famous courts in the world, amongst all the best player
s, with 14,000 people watching and a huge television audience at home. Two months before that I was playing – and losing – in front of four or five people at a Challenger event in Germany.

  That's why that Wimbledon experience was so special in 2005. It was so new. I was a schoolboy's age, ranked 317th in the world, I had no experience playing at that level, so going into the tournament my expectations were pretty low. Why wouldn't they be? I'd never done anything at Wimbledon before. This could so easily have been one of Kipling's Disasters.

  And yet, by the end of the tournament I'd become a friend of Sir Sean Connery, was being stalked by television crews, had received proposals of marriage and had had my first taste of 'Murray-mania'. It was surreal.

  I'd only started practising on the Friday before Wimbledon because I'd twisted my ankle at Queen's. That had caused quite a stir. Because I cramped up two points from winning my third-round match against Thomas Johansson, the Swede who won the Australian Open in 2002, people were saying I was unfit. It had been a good match in many ways for me, but going wide for a ball at 30–15 5–4 in the deciding set (my coaches will tell you I usually remember every single point I play) I had turned my ankle badly. I seemed to be on the ground for about ten minutes before they decided to do something about it. The trainer taped up the injury, but when I went back out to play I couldn't because the ankle was shot and my legs started cramping badly. I couldn't finish the match and didn't step on any court for another week. I didn't know if I was going to be able to play Wimbledon at all.

  When I walked into Wimbledon for my first match there as a professional, I already knew that I was playing first match on Court Two, known as 'the Graveyard of the Champions'. That was all right. I wasn't a champion. I had won precisely two matches in my life on the ATP tour.

  It was weird. Many things would be weird this week. First of all I had to get used to being in that main locker room with the stars who had no clue who I was. Normally someone with my ranking, the second lowest in the entire draw, would be in the upstairs locker room with the lower-ranked players – and Andy Roddick, because he refused to go in the main one until he won Wimbledon. I think that's OK for him, if that's how he feels, but being downstairs was a perk I was prepared to take.

  It was still very strange. Roger Federer was in there. All the top players were in there – plus John McEnroe, Pat Cash and all the commentators who were going to be playing in the Over-35s tournament in the second week. I felt out of place because no one knew who I was, and I felt them staring at me and thinking: 'What are you doing in here?' Maybe they thought I was a stray ball boy.

  These guys were all much older and more famous than I was. I felt awkward. Obviously I knew nothing compared with them. The only thing I could do was keep my head down and not speak unless spoken to. Some people might find that hard to believe when they see me on court, but it's true. I didn't think it was right to go up to these guys and start acting like we were friends. I was sure they wouldn't like it.

  McEnroe, of course, is an icon and everybody loves him at Wimbledon. I wouldn't have said a word to him if we hadn't met before but I knew him – or sort of knew him – because we'd met a few months earlier at an exhibition tournament at the Wembley Arena. It is not a memory I treasure. In fact, it was pretty embarrassing, but at least it broke the ice – almost – with one of the greatest players of all time.

  It was a $250,000, eight-player, one-set, straight knock-out, winner-takes-all event at the back end of 2004 and I had no business being there at all. At the time I was just a 17-year-old junior, but Tim Henman had pulled out with an injury and I had just won the US Open Juniors, so I had had a surprise call asking if I would be able to go down and play.

  That was another one of those surreal experiences. I was invited to the press conference the day before play started and found myself sitting between Boris Becker, Goran Ivanisevic and John McEnroe, three legends of the game. I was stuck right in the middle, feeling so nervous and so intimidated I could hardly speak.

  I was such a nobody, even more than I would be at Wimbledon. It didn't help that I was due to play McEnroe in the opening round and he was taking the match very seriously. I worked this out after the press conference when the photographers asked the two of us to square up and stare into one another's eyes. It was just desperately embarrassing and a little scary.

  McEnroe wasn't speaking to me. He wasn't putting me at my ease – which was fine. I didn't mind – but I couldn't believe they were making me do this: a 17-year-old kid doing a boxing stare-out with someone like John McEnroe. He was loving it. You could tell he was enjoying it and I was just hating it.

  Result: he won 6–1. It was the first time I'd played in front of a decent-size crowd and I was so nervous I couldn't play at all well. I hadn't been practising, I'd been taking a break after the US Open and I hadn't even turned professional yet. It was a last-minute call-up and I was playing horribly. It was awful. Being on court with McEnroe was awesome, but feeling so inadequate was just terrible. At the end of it I said: 'Mr McEnroe. It has been an honour to play against you.' Seeing him again six months later at Wimbledon, I didn't know whether to be horrified or pleased.

  I'd come straight from junior tournaments and low-grade senior events when no one cared whether you won or lost, except your mother, and the entire audience was one man and his dog. I'd stayed in rubbish hotels, family digs, boarding school dormitories and sometimes you ran out of money for food. Now suddenly I was part of the biggest tournament in the world, staying in the basement flat of a house in Wimbledon village with my mum and my brother and being offered a courtesy car just to drive down the hill to the courts. It was hard to believe. Some days I just walked. It didn't matter. Despite my brief showing at Queen's, nobody recognised me. No one took any notice of me. But after my second match, it changed. That was when it all went a little bit mad.

  First, however, I had to survive that opening match, my debut as a senior professional at Wimbledon. I was a bit nervous when I woke up after a decent sleep but I was also really, really focused. My opponent was George Bastl of Switzerland, a good player ranked higher than me – but then everyone was ranked higher than me. The bad news was that he had beaten Pete Sampras, one of the greatest grass-court players of all time, at Wimbledon three years before. The good news was that I still thought I had a chance of winning.

  As I said, we were on Court Two – the scene of his famous triumph against Sampras, who had won Wimbledon seven times – but that didn't worry me. I walked out there with 'Let's Get Started' on my iPod and it turned out to be quite a theme tune for the week that would change my life.

  There weren't many people watching as we started, but the crowd grew as the match went on. I played really well and my serve didn't get broken the entire match. I won 6–4 6–2 6–2 and then I delayed Venus Williams coming on court for the second match because I was trying to sign so many autographs.

  That wasn't just me being naïve. It was a promise I had made to myself years before on my first ever trip to Wimbledon as a kid with friends on a minibus from Dunblane Sports Club. I was seven years old and my hero at the time was Andre Agassi. I really wanted his autograph but I couldn't get near him. I had to come away without it and was really disappointed. I promised myself there and then that if I was ever a famous player I wouldn't ignore the kids who wanted my autograph. I'd sign as many as I could. Sorry Venus, I just didn't realise how long it would take.

  It was ages before I got back to the locker room. I was still a little amazed to be in there. It was old-fashioned but unbelievably clean. Next to every sink was deodorant and shaving foam – not that I used it. Two locker-room attendants were available to get you towels. There was drinking water, Coke and Sprite. They'd got everything in there. I'd never experienced anything like it in my life.

  It wasn't long ago that I'd been in some horrible places in junior tournaments round the world, where the kids don't care where they pee and everything stinks. You'd see insects like large
black beetles scurrying about and some of the showers were just pipes sticking out of a wall, pouring dirty, bad-smelling water. There are no towels and usually no loo roll. You just take one from your hotel. You get used to it. It's fine. But, for this and many other reasons, Wimbledon was a massive culture shock.

  That night, after my first win, we went out for a Pizza Express takeaway. We've always joked that my mum's cooking is not the best. Actually it's not a joke. So most nights we ate out or ordered in. I didn't celebrate though. I was obviously really happy that I'd won, but the tournament was so important to me, I just wanted to make sure I was ready for my next match. This one would be a really tough test, against a player with a bit of a reputation for gamesmanship, Radek Stepanek from the Czech Republic. However, there was more to it than that.

  Stepanek's coach at the time was Tony Pickard, the former British Davis Cup captain who had famously coached the Swede Stefan Edberg when he won Wimbledon in 1988 and 1990.

  Some time before Wimbledon he'd met my mum at a tournament and decided to have a conversation with her about what I was doing at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona and why I was playing Futures events in Spain.

  'What's Andy doing playing in Spain and not in British Futures events?' he asked her. 'He should be back here, competing at home. It shows fear that he's leaving his country. He will lose locker-room respect if he goes on avoiding British players.'

  My mum told him that she just wanted me to be happy and that I was doing very well in Spain. It didn't seem as though he was very impressed.

  'I do know the men's tour,' he said, implying that she didn't. 'I used to coach Stefan Edberg.' Then he walked off.

  I don't know what he thought when his player and I were drawn against each other in the second round at Wimbledon but word reached us that people in Stepanek's camp were saying things like: 'This kid's got nothing to beat us with. He can't hurt us.' I didn't need the incentive to win at Wimbledon. I'm competitive about absolutely everything. I really wanted to win this next match.