Authors: Andy Murray
So that is my side of the story. I'd given everything when I
played Davis Cup, and for the one match I didn't play –
because I was trying to protect myself from injury and from
losing my ranking – I was highly criticised. I think I made the
right decision for me. I stand by it. Some people will disagree.
They think it is black-and-white: you should play for your
country – but they aren't putting themselves in my shoes.
Jamie was obviously angry. If I look at it from his point of
view, I can understand that maybe I should have phoned him
and explained myself better. But when you know that it would
be one of those phone calls where you get someone shouting
'You're an idiot' down the phone, it makes you think twice.
I called my mum when I first heard what Jamie had said to
the press. I told her I thought it was a bit of a mistake,
especially as I have really tried to support him throughout his
career. When I was asked advice about him by the Davis Cup
coach and captain, I was really positive. The things he said
became more hurtful because I had backed him to play in Tim
Henman's last match, the doubles against Croatia in the Davis
Cup at Wimbledon the year before.
That was the tie when I was asked to play a dead rubber on
the Sunday even though we were leading Croatia 3–0 in the
best-of-five match series. John Lloyd asked me because a big
crowd was expected. The LTA backed him up and reminded
me that TV would cover the match if I was playing.
I said: 'No, I'm not playing. No one plays a dead rubber. No
one. I'm not risking myself getting injured on slippery glass just
for a match no one cares about and it makes no difference
whether I win or lose.' I got a text message from my brother at
4.30 in the morning after that. It said: 'You're a feakin'
embarrassment to your country. I can't believe you won't just
suck it up and play one dead rubber. You're a disgrace.'
So I said: 'OK, I'll play the match'. But I was in a bad mood
on the court. I didn't want to be there. I could have said that it
was the biggest joke ever that I was playing that match, I could
have said it was ridiculous, but the crowd gave me really great
support and I managed to win in straight sets against Roko
Karanusic, a Croatian player ranked outside the top-100 at the
time. So much for me being on television. The crowd probably
thought I was being as moody as my reputation, but at least I
had a reason. I said to John Lloyd afterwards that if I'm going
to continue with the Davis Cup: 'I am only playing if the other
guys on the team are giving a hundred per cent, practise hard
and play hard. I've worked way, way too hard to get where I
am in tennis to put up with other players not giving everything
they have. It isn't fair on me. I have worked
so
hard to get
where I am. I am not going to go and risk it by playing three
matches in five days when you've got other people on the
squad who aren't trying hard enough.'
I stand by that too. Instead of being about 'Andy', why
wouldn't they step up and win a Davis Cup match themselves
instead of having a go at me about it? If Britain is to have a
bright future in the Davis Cup, I do believe it's time for some
of the other guys to step up to the plate as well.
Jamie Baker did, actually. He beat Agustin Calleri in straight
sets in Argentina, but it was the fifth match and a dead rubber
by then. Argentina were already leading 4–0 after Jamie –
Baker, not my brother – led off by losing 6–1 6–3 6–3 to world
number nine David Nalbandian, followed by Bogdanovic
losing easily to Calleri. My brother and Ross Hutchins held
three set points in the second set of their match against
Nalbandian and Acasuso in the doubles, but lost in straight
sets. The final result was 4–1. It was a pretty sound beating
they took, but everybody was expecting that. Maybe some
good will come out of it. Some people will realise the depth of
the team is not up to scratch. Without Tim and Greg, we don't
have a team that merits being in the World Group.
Eventually the whole argument died down. My brother and
I were fine afterwards. I called him on his birthday. We sent
each other texts when we both won tournaments the following
week, me in the singles at Marseilles, him in the doubles at San
José. He obviously still believed in the things he said. He never
did back down in the press. But it was fine. He was entitled to
do that, not that I agreed with it. If he was looking at things
from his point of view, he was disappointed. If he had put
himself in my shoes, he wouldn't have reacted like that. I was
hurt but it is something you move on from. All brothers fight
about things. It is just a shame it was in public. The only
explanation I've come up with is that he's never played three
five-set matches in three days and he's never played a singles
match for five sets on clay.
Some people said to me afterwards: 'You said you couldn't
win a tournament after playing Davis Cup, but Jamie won a
title the very next week.' I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
Jamie was playing doubles. With the new scoring system – first
point after deuce wins the game and the third set has been
replaced with a 10-point tie-break – the average match lasts
about an hour. Plus he wasn't playing a Davis Cup singles on
the Friday or the Sunday, and he was playing the following
week in an ATP event in America, in a similar time zone, not
over in Europe. It was the most ridiculous argument ever. It
was not even close to being accurate. I ought to be used to it
by now, but sometimes I feel as though regardless of what I do,
I'm going to get criticised. That's just the way it seems.
Not long after this I logged on to my website and there was
a discussion about an article a journalist had written in the
Guardian
. Somebody wrote that it was 'the most scathing
attack on Andy Murray I've ever read', so naturally I was
curious to see it. I called it up on my phone and sat there
reading it and laughing. Basically it said I'm an idiot. It began
with the question: 'Can Andy Murray and Jamie Murray really
be related?' comparing Jamie's smile with my scowl and
Jamie's pleasing face with my 'Donald Duck features'. It also
said my features were 'dolichocephalic', but I didn't know
what that meant. (I found out later it's 'having a relatively long
skull'.)
Kim was sitting next to me. 'What are you laughing about?'
she said. 'I'm just reading this.' I showed her. 'Yeah, I read it
earlier but I didn't say anything to you because it's not very
nice.' No, but it was hilarious. By the end, he'd had a go at my
personality ('terse, impatient, sour'), my looks ('bum-fluff
tache') and not beating Roger Federer in Marseilles. To be fair,
it would have been hard to beat Roger in Marseilles as he
wasn't playing there, but maybe the guy thought better of me
when I did beat Federer two weeks later in Dubai. Then again,
he probably didn't.
I remembered that I'd met him before – Simon Hattenstone
– when I was doing a sponsor day some time ago for David
Lloyd Leisure. The first interview I did was with a couple of
ladies from a woman's magazine, and one said: 'I can't believe
how nice you are.' So I can't have been incredibly terse,
impatient and sour that day. Then this guy comes and was
swearing throughout the interview and was just generally
weird, following me around with his recorder after we had
finished talking. According to his article, I was the most charmless
person he had ever met. I thought he was the strangest
person
I
had ever met.
As it happens, I was more amused than upset about his story.
None of it mattered. It just put into context some of the more
violently critical pieces that were written after the Davis Cup.
It just seemed to keep coming for a while, not least the sarcastic
stories about my knee being strong enough to play a bit of
football at the National Tennis Centre when apparently it
wasn't good enough to go to Argentina.
As I seem to say very often, maybe I shouldn't have done it,
but I wish people had understood that there is a huge difference
between having a fun kickabout on a patch of grass for twenty
minutes and playing a three-to-five-set match on clay. I
know the limitations of my knee when it's inflamed and I know
which movements could cause trouble. When I'm messing
around or training I can avoid them, but when I'm in a match,
that's not possible. I am sure when people are injured they
don't sit around doing nothing. No one completely shuts
down. When I hurt my wrist I didn't avoid a tennis court for
two months. I went and hit balls over the net at 10 per cent
speed instead. You still practice. You're still in the gym. Maybe
I shouldn't have played football, but
only
because it resulted in
some bad public relations, not because it was bad for my
health.
If everything goes well, I will play Davis Cup against Austria
in September, if I am asked. I really do enjoy playing it. I think
most players agree it comes at a very difficult time and it isn't
easy to fit into your schedule, but if people question my heart
to play for my country, given the way I have played in the past,
I think that is a little harsh.
I played against Serbia and Montenegro in Glasgow in April
2006 when really I should have been in bed. It was a pressure
thing again. I was told: 'If you don't play, the team's going to
lose.' The tie was in Scotland for, I think, only the second time
in history and everybody was looking forward to it, especially
me. Then I became ill with swollen glands and a fever and was
advised by my doctor that I would be unlikely to recover in
time for the tie. I was at home in Dunblane in bed for almost a
week leading up to the match. I thought it would be better for
someone else to play rather than me at less than a hundred per
cent. Well, I could have given a hundred per cent but only for
about twenty minutes. The team came across to see me on the
Tuesday before the Friday start, but it can't have been much of
a sight. I was downstairs on the couch under my duvet, feeling
horrible and taking antibiotics. It was so frustrating because I
really wanted to play. It was a big match against a good team
and everybody was really excited about it.
I did turn up for the pre-match press conference two days
later. I wanted to be there to support the team. It took my mind
off being ill, but when I arrived home again I was still feeling
horrendous. The team doctor had said I was well enough to
play singles on the first day, but luckily, there was another
doctor there, one who my physio at the time knew pretty well,
so we went to him for a second opinion. He checked my throat
and temperature and his reaction was: 'No, you shouldn't be
playing. You are not well.'
It wasn't the first time my body had disagreed with the
official doctor. In a previous Davis Cup tie in Switzerland in
2005, when I played Federer for the first time, in the doubles,
my back was feeling a little bit sore. The physio reckoned I
would be fine with massage and manipulation, but the doctor
came over and insisted I took anti-inflammatories. I said: 'No,
I'm not keen on them to be honest.' He still insisted so I took
one, held it in my hand and then threw it on the ground as I
was walking to the court. Half-an-hour later the doc came
back again. 'How's your back?' he asked. I told him fine.
'Good,' he said. 'That will be the anti-inflammatory kicking in
now.' I've smiled about that a few times to myself.
I wish I could have felt better in Glasgow, but I knew the
second doctor was right. So I approached the captain, Jeremy
Bates, and said: 'Look, I really can't play on Friday.' He understood.
Then he said: 'Can you play in the doubles on
Saturday?' and my immediate reaction was: 'Yeah, I want to',
even though I knew I wouldn't be best prepared for it because
of the illness. That was my attitude towards the Davis Cup. I
was proud to play for my country and I really wanted to. No
one seemed to remember that when the Argentina affair
happened, but that's another story.
So I played in the doubles with Greg Rusedski against Ilia
Bozoljac and Nenad Zimonjic, who were not exactly high-profile
players. Zimonjic reached a career high of 176 in the
world in 1999, though he was a top-100 doubles player, and
Bozoliac never quite cracked the top-100. Even so, Greg and I
managed to lose 3–6 6–3 3–6 4–6, and, according to the press
we were going to be fined £100,000 and thrown out of the
competition for three years because of my bad language. I did
swear when we were leaving the court and unfortunately there
was a microphone under the umpire's chair and so my rant
came across on everyone's TV. That was the occasion I called
the umpire 'fucking useless'. I was disappointed that we'd lost.
I was disappointed I played badly and I was disappointed with
the umpire's performance. I really felt that a couple of wrong
calls that he made against us in the third set had affected the
outcome of the match.
In the end, we were hardly fined anything at all and we were
nowhere near getting thrown out of the competition. It was
ironic that this tie (which we lost) should be remembered for
that, when in fact it went some way to proving how desperate
I was to play for my country. I had lost a lot of energy through
the illness and had had very little time to prepare for the match
– all of about twenty minutes on the Friday evening after the
first day's play. I didn't win, but I really tried to do my best.
That was why hearing your brother say: 'If you really pushed
yourself you could play,' over Argentina was so hurtful. I had
pushed myself that time in Glasgow and I had done badly for
the team. I had also set my recovery back another week. I'd
remembered that. You would be stupid not to learn from that
experience.
It was also ironic that around this time, the LTA were
exploring the possibility of Novak Djokovic, the Serbian
teenager, changing nationality and becoming eligible to play
for Britain. That was the talk of the press conference at the
time. My view, when they asked me, was: 'Imagine how good
our Davis Cup team would be!' It would be great from that
point of view, even if it all seemed a bit strange.