‘My on-court rants are awkward’

Andy Murray sits in a quiet room on the first floor of the clubhouse at The Queen’s Club in west London. It is a crisp, bright day outside and a groundsman and his mower are starting to bring summer’s lawns back to life. In its manicured beauty, it is a picture of serenity and of order. Murray’s mind is clear and sharp now but he lets it drift back a few weeks to Melbourne and a time when it was madding with tumult and confusion.

In the Australian Open men’s final, when he and Novak Djokovic were level after two typically gruelling and intense opening sets and the Serb appeared to be on the brink of a physical breakdown, Murray says he started to think too far ahead.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this could be yours’,” says Murray.

“If someone is cramping in the final of a Grand Slam, the match is yours.” But Djokovic recovered and Murray abandoned himself to uncomprehending fury. By the time Britain’s 2013 Wimbledon champion retrieved his composure, it was too late.

“I definitely got down on myself,’ says Murray. I don’t want that to happen. It’s not like I come off the court and I’m really proud of myself and I say, ‘Well done, Andy, you just blew the Australian Open.”

Sometimes, the criticism afterwards can be quite difficult. I don’t want to behave that way. I’m telling you right now, I don’t want to behave that way.
“Having learned a little bit about how the mind works, I understand that it can happen. It is like when a footballer gets kicked and stands up and slaps somebody across the face and gets himself sent off and then is immediately, “Oh no, why have I just done that?”

“People don’t want to behave in those ways in pressure situations but unfortunately they do sometimes. I have only got myself to blame but in some ways, it’s natural. It’s something I’m working on constantly to try to improve. It’s not like I dismiss it and say it was nothing.’

As Murray thinks back to Melbourne, to screaming at himself, to contorting his face with anger and yelling up at the section of seats where his coach, Amelie Mauresmo, his fiancée, Kim Sears, and other members of his team were sitting, he recoils at the memory. He knows it was self-defeating.

It is one of the reasons why he has been open about the fact that, like many other leading sportsmen and women, he has sought the counsel of a psychiatrist and a psychologist. Mental health and the psychology of the game is a theme one of the greatest British sportsmen of our generation keeps returning to over the next hour.
“In the past, the things I would say on court, it’s embarrassing,” says Murray.

“I would never, ever speak to anybody like that. Ever. Here or in a restaurant or in my day-to-day life, I would never do it.
“If you listen to a lot of the things I say when I’m on the court, I’m incredibly self-critical. But I have learned how the emotional part of our brain takes over, that what we will tend to do is try to make excuses and blame other people and say that it isn’t your fault.

“But I know fine well when I come off the court after the match, the first person that I blame is myself. I don’t want to say anything wrong to anyone when I am on the court, but it happens. When someone starts questioning you and you are in a pressure situation, the natural thing to do is to start making excuses for why you are doing something wrong.

“So sometimes I will say, “Oh, I missed that backhand because I haven’t practised it enough”, when I know that that is not the case and I know it is completely irrational. It is something I am constantly trying to get better at. I have spoken to a lot of athletes and that is what we do.”

To understand more about Murray, it helps to understand a little of Mauresmo, too, and why Murray appointed her as his coach in June last year, a few months after his split with Ivan Lendl. Many said it was a “brave” move, which was their code for “stark, staring mad”.

Most thought the partnership would fail. More than that, it seemed last summer and for much of the time since that most people hoped it would fail.
Mauresmo was only 19 when she announced at a Press conference at the 1999 Australian Open that she was gay. Lindsay Davenport, whom she had just beaten in the semi-final, said that battling Mauresmo was like ‘playing a guy’. Martina Hingis, who beat her in the final, said that Mauresmo was ‘half a man’.

She was labelled a choker, even though she reached world No 1, having lost in several Grand Slams from positions of strength. But then in 2006, towards the end of her career, she won the Australian Open and Wimbledon.

Murray knew her story and was inspired by it. He spoke to her and was impressed. He liked the fact that she seemed to have found an inner peace and that she was not bloated with the bombast that seemed to dominate the characters of some of the male coaches on the ATP Tour. — BBC.