Authors: Andy Murray
We're certainly similar on the tennis court – both seriously
competitive. There was a family doubles event at our club in
Dunblane which we would play in from time to time. I also remember
us playing a fun summer tournament in North Berwick together. At
that time I was a Scottish internationalist and I actually remember
being quite nervous before our match because I didn't want to let
Andy down. He was eight years old and he wanted to win. It was a
handicap event and I knew he'd be thinking: 'My mum's one of the
best in Scotland, so we should win.' In the end, we didn't and I felt
thoroughly annoyed with myself. He tells me that I was swearing
under my breath at the back of the court all through the match – and
I probably was!
I know it was supposed to be a fun tournament, but I am not good
at playing sports socially. I can't hit a bad shot and then laugh about
it. I just can't do it. There is a myth that when I was a youngster I was
such a bad loser that my mother once confiscated my rackets. That's
not true, but she did leave me at a tournament once to find my own
way home when I smacked my only racket on the ground during a
match and broke the frame.
Maybe Andy gets some of his competitiveness from me, but when
I watch him play I can see he has something that I never had as a
player: an amazing self-belief. He plays to win, I played not to lose.
Going on to become the Scottish National Coach was not
something I planned, it just happened. My dad always said he thought
I would make a great coach, but I was too busy when the boys were
small – setting up a lingerie and Italian jewellery business or helping
Mum in her children's toy shop – to do anything about it. It came
about as a happy accident.
There was a junior tournament at Stirling University and because I
had been Scottish number one (and probably because I was local)
they asked me if I would present the prizes at the end. I said OK, I
would. In a rash moment, handing over the awards to the under-12s,
I said that the winners – two boys and two girls – could come and
have a hit with me for an hour in Dunblane as a bonus. They all took
me up on it and afterwards the parents asked if I would do it on a
regular basis. That's where my first four pupils came from.
Two of them were a brother and sister from Falkirk and part of the
deal was that their mother would look after Andy and Jamie – take
them over to the park in their buggies – while I coached her children
for two hours. All four of those pupils went on to be Scottish Junior
Champions and one of them reached the top-500 in the world.
It turned out that coaching kids was something I loved to do. I have
very happy memories of Jamie Baker, another British Davis Cup
player, coming round to our house when he was really young and
playing table tennis on our kitchen table, with the boys using a
cornflake packet as the net. There was always something sporty going
on in our house. Ornaments had a pretty poor survival rate.
Andy has talked about the sacrifice he made to leave home at
fifteen and go to the Academy in Barcelona. He felt it was the right
thing to do, and we supported him completely. It was an easy
decision and, in some ways, a very hard decision too. Letting your
children go away from home in their early teens is always difficult and
we had already been warned that it could go horribly wrong.
I'm sure that Jamie's lack of confidence before his latter success as
a doubles player stemmed from the miserable time he had at the
LTA training school in Cambridge when he was only twelve. For a
long time after that he didn't want to be away from home for any
great length of time. Between the ages of about sixteen and twenty,
when he was really struggling around the lower levels of the men's
tour, it would have been very easy for him to have moved away from
tennis and never blossomed into the outgoing character he is now.
I feel tremendous relief about that outcome because I was
definitely guilty about Cambridge. I look back and understand what
happened, but at the time we just didn't know what to do for the
best. He had been offered a live-in place at Bisham Abbey to train
with Pat Cash's old coach, Ian Barclay, and he was desperate to go.
He had pretty much had his bags packed for six months. Then, one
month before he was due to start, the LTA announced that they
were closing Bisham Abbey down and the Cambridge option came
up instead. We had a look at it and he wanted to give it a try.
However, he was leaving his friends, his school, his home, his
parents, his first coach and all that is secure about life. You have to
feel absolutely certain that where your child is going is the right
environment, not just on the courts but twenty-four hours a day –
and it wasn't right for Jamie. He used to be in tears on the phone, but
he wanted to tough it out. I didn't know whether to leave him there
or bring him home, it was a terrible dilemma. That's why I am a great
believer now in establishing much better regional set-ups. Many
children won't thrive a long way from home at such a young age, and
yet at that age you need high-quality sparring partners, not just a few
local kids and your coach.
In the end, after a few months we did go and fetch Jamie back and
I could immediately see his game had deteriorated, or his interest had,
and he seemed far less happy on the tennis court than he had ever
been before. It was heart-breaking. That is why we had to be sure
about Andy's decision to go to Spain and, when he loved it, why we
worked so hard to afford it.
We got some funding from the LTA, sportscotland, and from
Tennis Scotland in the first year, but were still left a lot to find
ourselves as costs for training, lodging and competition were around
£30,000 a year. We also had a little sponsorship from Robinsons, but
it's difficult to encourage big firms to invest in potential. It is much
easier when you have actually made it. Although it was sometimes
pretty stressful trying to find the funding over the three years Andy
was at Sanchez-Casal, and it was a massive relief when RBS came
onboard to sponsor Andy during that time but in many ways I am
glad it was tough because it made it a real challenge and kept us all
working hard.
We have proof that hard work pays off. I'll never forget the day he
beat Soderling in Bangkok in 2005 to make it into the world's top-100.
He sent me a text afterwards that just said: 'I did it Mum.' I
remember crying as I read it. I was just as tearful when he beat Tim
Henman for the first time, in Basle, at the end of the same year. I
wasn't there, but I knew it would be a really big thing for Andy
because Tim was so much a role model to him. I listened to him
sounding so humble in radio and TV interviews afterwards and I
thought: 'Andy, you have handled that so well.' I was really proud of
him.
I think the most recent time I cried was when he won in St
Petersburg at the end of 2007 after coming through that really
difficult time with his wrist injury. He'd struggled physically and
mentally, missed four full months of competition and he had had
some horrible results in the run-up to the tournament. It had been a
long, long haul, but he won and I remember thinking: 'He's back.'
I keep these moments to myself. I don't think Andy would ever
have seen me cry at one of his tournaments. If he did, he would just
give me a row. 'What are you crying for, you stupid woman?' I am
pretty sure about this because at Christmas 2006 he gave me a card
that said: 'I'd like to thank you Mum . . .' and he listed a whole pile of
things like '. . . for always believing in me, always supporting me, always
letting me make my own decisions . . . but I most want to thank you
for being the best Mum in the world.'
Of course, as I am reading it, tears are running down my face. He
took one look at me and said, genuinely mystified: 'What are you
crying for? You are so stupid.' He is very affectionate, but he would
never say nice things like those to my face. I don't think most
teenagers would, but just the thought that he is appreciating what we
do for him, meant a great deal to me.
The joys and perils of being on tour with Andy are pretty
numerous. I don't go to many of his tournaments because I have a
job and he has a coach, but when I do go there is always something
to do. At the 2007 US Open he suddenly turned round and said:
'Mum, I haven't got any clean shirts for my match tomorrow,' despite
the fact that there's a laundry service at the courts. So – not for the
first time – I had to wash out his dirty shirt in the sink, hang it up and
blow-dry it with a hotel hairdryer.
Then there is the story of the shoes. He wore through his tennis
shoes at the Madrid Open while winning a three-set match against
Ivan Ljubicic which finished at 6pm. The shops shut two hours later
and although he tried everywhere, he couldn't find the same make in
his size. He had to play the next day, an evening match, against
Djokovic and so Brad called me and said: 'The kid's got no shoes.
You're going to have to find some and bring them over here.' At that
precise moment I had just checked my bags on to the Heathrow–
Edinburgh flight after working in London for a few days. My battery
was dying on my phone and I had no charger with me. First I had to
try and locate new shoes. It was 7pm in the evening – no shops open
– so I called Patricio who was on the way to a Chelsea match. He
said there were shoes in his office in Fulham. I called Patricio's partner
to ask if he would open the office at this time of night and get me the
shoes. He did, and offered to bring them to Heathrow. Bonus.
While he was doing that, I caught the tube over to Terminal 4 to
see if I could buy a battery charger. No luck, so I had to call Brad on
a pay phone to say I had the shoes and would get a flight in the
morning. I went to the BA desk to book a seat but there were only
two left and they were business class. I'd never flown business class in
my life, but I had no option. I had to stump up the £600. I then went
to the hotel booking desk and found a room for the night. Another
£140. I waited for the shoes to arrive, then had to hang around till
about 10.30pm to get my bags off the Edinburgh flight, then jumped
on the Hotel Hoppa Bus and got to bed just before midnight.
I was up again at 4.30am to catch the flight and made it to the
tournament hotel in Madrid before he was due to set off for practice.
I handed him the shoes and he said: 'I don't know why you bothered,
there's nothing wrong with the ones I've got!'
Every cloud has a silver lining, though. David Beckham, then playing
with Real Madrid, was at that tournament and I met him in the
players' lounge after the match. Maybe it was divine justice for the
journey I'd made to get there.
You might say life with Andy can be hectic. It can also be
wonderfully funny. The Scottish boxer Alex Arthur came to
Wimbledon 2006 to watch Andy in his match against Andy
Roddick. He came up to the players' lounge with us afterwards with
his wife and said: 'I'd rather go a full fifteen rounds than sit through
that again. I've never been so nervous in my life.' He told us that he
had been sitting behind this American guy who kept shouting: 'Way
to go Roddick.' Every time he did, Alex shouted like an echo: 'Way
to go Murray.' He said. 'I know it was really childish, but I couldn't
help myself.'
Being Andy's mum is never boring, for reasons good and bad. My
reaction when he is in trouble for swearing is the same as any other
parent. 'Oh no!' It's embarrassing and you know it's going to lead to
us having a 'conversation' about it, but I do understand why it
happens because Andy is a fiery character. It means he is frustrated
by something, like missing an easy shot or adopting the wrong tactic.
He is only angry at himself and he has always worn his heart on his
sleeve. He has always been like that. It is part of him. Unfortunately
he gets wrongly portrayed as an angry young man when he is
anything-but off the court.
I admit his language at the Davis Cup in Glasgow against Serbia
in 2006 was embarrassing. He was perhaps a little bit unlucky that
the microphone at the umpire's chair picked it up and broadcast his
outburst to the nation on television. I'd rather that hadn't happened
– but I think he really felt that a bad call had changed the outcome
of the match and he was particularly fractious that day because
he had been so ill with a bad throat (ironically!) that he shouldn't
have been playing at all. However, he knows he made a mistake and
he learned from it. He has never been in so much trouble since
then.
People also noticed that Andy shouted at Brad Gilbert, when he
was his coach, when things were annoying him on court. It caused
quite a bit of comment, but Brad didn't mind. He said he preferred
Andy to shout at him rather than shouting at himself: he thought it
was a way of deflecting the blame for a bad shot on to somebody
else and maybe that was a good way to handle it, that Andy didn't
the rest of the match berating himself.
Andy has deserved some criticism for his behaviour, but I often
think he is punished in the media more than he deserves. The
accusation that he is anti-English is just nonsense. We both agree that
there is nothing better than beating the English if you are Scottish, but
my mum is English so I have absolutely no problems with anyone
south of Hadrian's Wall. In sport, there is a wonderfully competitive
element when Scotland plays England but, in the end, it is just a
cultural joke. Andy was very unlucky that something he said as a joke
– about supporting England's opponents at the 2006 World Cup –
was taken seriously by a few people in the media.
The other criticism we have to contend with is that he's injury-prone.
Sometimes perceived problems are just a combination of bad
luck and sensational headlines. He has been a little bit unfortunate to
turn the same ankle three times in his sporting career, but the first
time he did it he wasn't playing tennis at all. He was a teenager playing
football for a junior team, Auchterarder Primrose, and it wasn't
repaired quite as well as it might have been because we weren't that
savvy about injuries in those days.