Hitting Back Page 4

  When I won the tournament, beating a Czech guy called Tomas Piskacek 6–4 6–1 in the final, it was the day before Christmas Eve. Apparently, I presented the Orange Bowl trophy to my gran and said: 'Here you are, Gran. Take that home and fill it with one of your fresh fruit salads and we can have it with vanilla ice cream for Christmas Day.' She did. She was very reliable like that.

  There were only a couple of other junior tournaments that made a real impression. One was Les Petits, an Under-14s in Tarbes, France, a sort of European equivalent of the Orange Bowl. It provided the best competition on the continent, plus my favourite brand of French vanilla yoghurt. No wonder I've always remembered it. Previous winners of the title included Rafa Nadal, Richard Gasquet and Martina Hingis, so it can't be a bad sign of a player's progress. Pretty much anyone who has won there has gone on to become a top-100 player and I reached the final.

  To get there, I'd beaten Novak Djokovic, who was a week younger than me, in the semi-final, and then in the final I faced the Russian Alexanger Krasnorutsky and held a match point against him. He was serving – game point for him, match point for me because of the sudden-death deuce rule we were playing. I can still remember the shot that I missed. It was a backhand. I'd hit a drop shot, he came to the net, I went for the backhand but couldn't quite reach. Then I lost the final set 6–3.

  I definitely remember crying afterwards. I called my mum and told her I'd lost when I should have won. It made it worse that I'd seen the trophy and the engraved names of all the star players who had won there. Mum said a lot of brilliant players had played in the final and lost, like Mario Ancic, so that made me feel a bit better, but I was still pretty down because I knew how big the tournament was. Everyone was so disappointed for me. I felt it badly. A lot of people had come to watch. The crowd was about 2,000 strong. As junior tournaments go, it was second only to the Slams.

  Almost every other weekend I was playing somewhere. Most I can't remember any more. I know I won the warm-up event for Tarbes at Telford because I earned myself a scooter, one of those little metal fold-ups that were popular at the time. My doubles partner Andrew Kennaugh and I promptly set up a racing track round our hotel car park which was a little bit ridiculous but fun at the time. I've still got that scooter in the garage.

  It wasn't all about winning, though. At that age, I went through a stage of losing confidence and struggling. I was suddenly losing to Andrew who I usually used to beat easily. Everyone seemed to be getting stronger than me. I was growing in height but I wasn't filling out. I was quite weak. It took me to the middle of my fifteenth year to beat Andrew 6–0 6–1 in an ITF event in Nottingham. By then I'd given up football. I'd decided to devote myself to tennis and that commitment made a big difference.

  I loved all sports, I was obsessed with sport, but at some point in life you have to make up your mind to specialise. As I got older I started playing golf and going to loads of boxing, which is now my favourite sport to watch. I went to my first live boxing match in Glasgow to see Audley Harrison top the bill. I'll never forget it. We walked through the door, Jamie and I, and there was a little guy with his gloves and boxing shorts on walking towards us, shouting, swearing and completely gone. His face was battered and bright red. He looked completely beaten up. He walked right past us and out of the door.

  When we got to our seats the people sitting next to us said: 'You should have seen what's just happened. The last guy nearly got killed.' It was intense and intimidating and like nothing I'd experienced before. I realised that tennis was a completely different thing altogether. Tennis matches can be tense but these guys are getting lumps hit out of them. I have so much respect for them.

  I don't really know why I love boxing so much. It's not bloodlust. I've never been in a fight in my life. I'm not a violent type. It's not my nature off the court. I don't particularly like arguing. I can't think of anything worse, to be honest, than to be in a punch-up with someone. I've been in the ring with Amir Khan, but the only thing I hit with a glove was his punchbag.

  But when you're there at ringside, it's so intense, the anticipation is so great, the fighters are so close to one another in the ring, I get really nervous. I've been close enough to get slightly splattered in blood when Scott Harrison fought in Glasgow. Even that didn't put me off. It puts tennis in perspective. I can't believe how tough those guys have to be. It's scary.

  I've been a bit of a geek when it comes to boxing ever since. I'm friends with the Scottish super featherweight, Alex Arthur. I think I surprised him when we met by knowing so much about him. It's because, whenever boxing is on TV, whether it's the Portuguese national championships or a heavyweight title fight, I'll watch it. I know the results of almost all the fights for the last three or four years. I am that bad.

  I suppose the only sport you could say I didn't enjoy much was rugby. I hardly played it at all, but for some reason I remember going along, aged eight, to mini rugby at Stirling county for the first time. The coach had never seen me before and I had never watched a rugby match, never mind played in one. So when I got the ball and started running in the opposite direction from our try line, everyone was shouting: 'You're going the wrong way! YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!' All I was doing was running in a half-moon, round the defence, and going down to score a try.

  It's not my kind of sport. It seems to me the same thing is happening all the time. A guy kicks a ball into touch and gets a round of applause. I don't understand that at all.

  Golf Jamie and I took up as we got older. We were members at the country club at Gleneagles and that had a short 9-hole course which was perfect for us. Also Gran and Grandpa were members of the Dunblane Golf Club and used to take us out if we pestered them enough. I think they quite liked the fact that they could still beat us. They were pretty sick and tired of losing to us at tennis. They were both self-taught tennis players and had really odd strokes. Gran tells me that I used to get really cross with them when I was little and shout: 'Grandpa, play properly' when he was playing one of his weird-looking forehands. He maintains he invented topspin.

  Jamie became really good at golf at one stage, playing off a handicap of three. Maybe he was taking after my Uncle Keith who is a golf pro in America. Gran always says she feels sorry for my other uncle, Niall, because by the time she had ferried Keith to all his golf tournaments and my mum to all her tennis tournaments, there was no time to ferry Niall anywhere. He became an optician.

  My dad is a really good golfer too: he still plays off nine. He's also a member of a squash team and he still plays five-aside football. It was fun for Jamie and me to play any sport with him because he is as competitive as we are.

  Obviously, I saw so much of Mum when I was younger because she was my first tennis coach, but there are many things for which I can thank my dad. He was the one who used to discipline me more, and who used to be hard on me about getting into trouble at school or not doing my homework or saying a swear word by mistake. I still don't swear in front of my dad to this day – in front of millions on the television in matches, but never in front of Dad.

  However, I do remember him saying once: 'Don't take shit from anyone.' This was brilliant advice for when I was sent to Spain and had to look after myself. When you're that age, kids will tease you and you can get into fights. The stuff Dad had told me and the discipline he gave me when I was younger, really helped once I was out there on my own.

  My parents separated when I was about ten. I guess when any couple separates, it is difficult, but we were so young, we didn't really understand. You understand it more as you get older. Obviously it was a bit strange at the time to see Mum and Dad in different houses, but I reckon the experience will help me in later life with certain things. I will always want to try and achieve a steady relationship because it is not the nicest thing when your parents split up. I've had the same girlfriend, Kim, for a long time now and I will try hard to make it work.

  But although it was difficult at the time, Jamie and I love Mum and Dad ju
st the same. If you take into account all the things they have done for us both, I am sure they took us into consideration. It certainly was not made as awkward as it could be for us. I've seen what some parents can be like during a divorce, but ours obviously tried to keep any hard feelings away from us. We were lucky, Jamie and I, that as brothers we could do so many things together, but we never talked about the separation much. We speak about things more now than we did when we were younger.

  *

  Most people don't have a childhood that comes to an abrupt end on a certain date. Things change slowly. In my case, however, everything changed one day in September 2002: country, weather, family, friends, language, food, life. I went from being a boy in Dunblane to a tennis player in Spain. It was scary, but it was awesome too.

  Dunblane

  On Wednesday the 13th of March, 1996, Thomas Hamilton, 43, walked into Dunblane Primary School with two 9mm Browning pistols and two Smith and Wesson revolvers. He made his way to the gym where he fired multiple shots at point-blank range at a first-year primary class and their teacher, Gwen Mayor. He murdered sixteen children between five and six years old and the teacher before turning one of the guns on himself and committing suicide. It was the deadliest attack on children in the history of the UK.

  Jamie and I were at the school that day. Most people know that. I have been asked about it in press conferences a few times and I've always said that, because I was so young, I don't have any real recollection of the day. That is true. I genuinely can't remember much and it's not something I have ever wanted to go back and find about because it's so uncomfortable.

  It doesn't belong in my childhood at all. It seems randomly attached to my history, but in a way that I can't describe. To me, Dunblane was, and still is, one of the safest places in the world. Last Christmas I said to Mum that I could imagine people there not bothering to lock their front doors. That might seem strange when something so terrible happened in the middle of the town while I was there, but that is the way I have always felt. I don't want to dig deeper. I want that sense of comfort to stay the same. I don't think something so crazy and horrific should scar my feelings for my hometown. I think I am lucky I don't remember.

  JUDY MURRAY: The boys have always said they were too young to appreciate the enormity of what happened and I'm grateful for that. I have never said much about it except that it was, unquestionably, the worst day of my life. Everybody in the town would say the same thing. We never forget it, but what gives me the most pride and comfort is that Dunblane has not surrendered its spirit. It makes me proud that Andy and Jamie have played a small part in that. When people talk about Dunblane, they don't just think of the shootings, they might also think: 'That's where the Murrays come from.'

  We have moved on, but, of course, you never forget. Having spent my childhood here and then come back in my twenties to raise the boys, I still find it really hard to believe something like that happened in what feels like a little village to me. It is such a quiet, lovely place to live.

  My mother and I ran a children's toy and clothing shop in the middle of the town. That morning I was working in the shop with another woman who often came in to help. The phone rang and my colleague answered it. It was her daughter ringing to say she'd just heard on the radio that there had been a shooting at Dunblane Primary School and that a man with a gun was in the playground.

  'Are you sure?' I said, when she told me. It seemed utterly beyond belief. We were still trying to make sense of it when my mum came flying through the door, shouting: 'Have you heard? Have you heard! There's been a shooting up at the primary school.' I didn't hear any more, I just picked up my car keys and ran out of the door. I don't even remember saying anything to her.

  I got in the car and drove off. Of course, lots of other people were driving the same way at the same time. I can just remember slamming on my horn and swearing at the top of my voice while shouting: GET OUT OF THE WAY! GET OUT OF THE WAY! Eventually I had to stop the car and pull over somewhere. You couldn't get near the school for all the police vehicles and other cars that lined the road. I ran towards the school gates. You couldn't get near those either. There were dozens and dozens of other parents there, all barred from entry and desperate to find out what was going on. No one knew. There were rumours, whispers, but no one knew anything for sure.

  At last someone came and escorted the parents who had children in the school to a small guest house on the same road. I remember sitting there with a crowd of people and yet no one was saying anything, everyone gripped by the same terrible fear. More people came in, the room was filling up. We talked in whispers. I was sitting opposite a woman who was a head teacher at a primary school in the next town. Her son was one of Jamie's best pals and she said she had heard a rumour that a primary one class was involved, but she didn't know whether or not it was true. It was starting to get pretty crowded and I budged up on my chair to share it with a girl I had been at primary and secondary school with.

  Eventually, someone came in and asked all the parents with children in Mrs Mayor's class to please leave with them. There was a part of me in that moment that almost collapsed in relief. But the next second I was feeling so guilty because the woman I'd been sitting with jumped up and cried: 'That's my daughter's class!' I stood up to go with her because she was shaking terribly, but we were told that no one could go except the parents of the children involved. It was horrendous beyond words.

  This had all taken hours and hours. The shootings happened at 9.30am and it was now way beyond lunchtime. It was taking ages to organise the evacuation of the children in all the other classes. The authorities needed to make sure they were kept away from the scene of the gym and shielded from all the police cars and ambulances.

  I was finally given the boys at 2.30pm. I was trying to stay calm but I probably hugged them harder than they have ever been hugged in their lives. I have to say the school did an unbelievable job because they managed to get Andy and Jamie out to me together, despite them being in different classes, and it was obvious that they had absolutely no idea what had happened. They had simply been told that a man with a gun had been found in the school. The teachers had even managed to feed them lunch in their classrooms.

  By that time, we had heard that the murderer was this guy Thomas Hamilton who had run a Boys Club at the primary school and at Dunblane High School for years. We were all aware who he was. Andy and Jamie used to go to his club.

  So I stopped the car on the way home and explained to them what had happened. I didn't want them to find out from somebody else. It was my job to tell them as gently and carefully as I could. To this day Jamie never talks about it. He never asks any questions and he never mentioned it again. But Andy said immediately: 'Why would Mr Hamilton do a thing like that? Why wouldn't he just shoot himself?' I have never forgotten him saying that. I said: 'I think he must have just gone mad, Andy. Only a crazy person might do something like that.'

  For days after it happened the children were kept off school and the town was eerily quiet. If you went out, even for a newspaper, there were journalists waiting to stop you and ask questions: 'Did you know so-and-so?' So we stayed home, watching everything we could on television and still not being able to believe that it had happened just down the road.

  We'd all thought Dunblane was such a safe place. It was. It is. Yet somewhere in our past is this terribly tragedy that doesn't fit in. At the time, we just did our best to cope. The school was closed for about a week and when the children finally went back, everything had changed. Suddenly, you had to sign in and there were many changes in terms of security. I can't remember now whether the gym had already been knocked down, but it was eventually turned into a memorial garden.

  The extent of the teachers' ordeal soon became clear. Somebody told me that the nursery teachers were asked to go in and identify the bodies of the children who had been shot. Their own teacher had been killed and many of those children didn't have names on their gym kit. The only people who
would know them, apart from the parents, were those who had taught them the year before. Can you imagine anything more terrible and more sad than that?

  I still couldn't believe how – with all those children in the school and with all that furore and upset going on – the teachers had managed to keep the rest of the children in the classroom fed, watered and completely unaware of the horror so close to them. Those teachers saved the children from a million nightmares. Can you imagine if they had seen something? It could have haunted them for life. It was a heroic job the teachers did that day, and continued to do by getting themselves back to work when it was over.

  It went round in our minds for a long time afterwards. There had always been question marks about Hamilton, but for all that he was an oddball, I never, ever thought he was dangerous. It was only later when you read things about his collection of guns, that he lived on his own, ran the Boys Club . . . did you realise the problem was perhaps there all along.

  I'd given him a lift from the Boys club to the train station a few times because he lived in Stirling and he didn't have a car of his own. I had actually sat beside him and spoken to him. I didn't know him well by any means. He was definitely odd and a loner, but we had no idea that he had the potential to be a murderer.

  I think the police had tried to investigate him over the years because people had expressed concerns, but nobody had ever been able to prove anything. I think there was an effort to stop him setting up a boys club somewhere else but he took the case to the local ombudsman and they overturned the ban. There was obviously a major investigation later into the failings of the authorities. One parent, little Sophie North's father, continues to fight an anti-gun campaign. His story is so tragic because he lost his wife to cancer and all he had was his beautiful little five-year-old daughter. Suddenly he'd lost her too in a way you could never imagine.