Russeljones
Talk Tennis Guru
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/aug/19/andy-murray-us-open
As the US Open looms, the Scot is battling a virus that has infected his game since surgery: losing from winning positions
It is nearly a year since Andy Murray took the biggest gamble of his career, although he does not see the back surgery he underwent in quite such stark terms; it does not do to stir old demons.
On the eve of the US Open, however, Murray faces another, altogether more straightforward challenge, to the spirit rather than the body – and that is rediscovering the intensity and verve that drove him to his breakthrough victory at Flushing Meadows two years ago and carried him to the next peak: that momentous Wimbledon win in July 2013.
Since beating Novak Djokovic in a final of unimaginable intensity and drama, he has not so much drowned as trod water. There have been no titles to celebrate, he has tumbled from No2 in the world to No9 and he has lost 14 of 54 matches, as well as the coach who ignited his tennis. Ivan Lendl’s departure in March was by some way a bigger loss than any he suffered on the court (and it has not been a total disaster on the Tour; he has been in two semi‑finals this year and nine quarter-finals).
He is struggling now, though, with a new and puzzling virus that has infected his game: losing from winning positions. It happened again in Mason, Ohio, last week when Roger Federer overhauled a 4-1 deficit in the second set to put Murray out in the quarter‑finals of the Western & Southern Open. That dispiriting experience followed a similar collapse against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the same stage of the Rogers Cup in Toronto the previous week – and both echoed his defeat by Rafael Nadal in Rome in May, when he played one of the best sets of his career only to lose from 4-2 up in the third.
The question he and everyone else is asking is: why? Murray is not sure but he is working on it – which sounds like something your local mechanic might tell you if you brought in an old banger on its last legs. The Scot is hardly in that shape but he is concerned.
“I feel good,” he says as we chat on the players’ balcony in Mason. “I feel well, I have practised well. I just need to get that winning mentality back. Last week [losing to Tsonga] I messed the match up a bit.” As Murray sees it: “Guys can come back. That can always happen. When you’re playing against a guy as good as Tsonga, he can always come back. He’s a streaky player as well.”
That “as well” sounded as if Murray was including himself in that category. “But from that position, you don’t want to be losing four games in a row,” he adds. “It’s OK to lose one or two, but not four. That’s something I’ll have to keep an eye on.”
However, in the press conference after losing to Federer – when the virus struck again – Murray was decidedly more downbeat. “It was pretty poor,” he had to admit.
This was becoming a habit, a worrying one. Earlier in his career, Murray suffered from mood and form swings but that inconsistency looked to have been conquered in the two years he was with Lendl. Could the blow of losing his inspiring coach be hurting still – and could Lendl’s successor, Amélie Mauresmo, repair the damage?
At the mention of the Frenchwoman’s name, Murray’s face lights up again and he remains aware that the novelty of the arrangement has not quite faded. “There’s a very big difference in personality, that’s for sure,” he says. “In the work we do before, she’s very demanding. When we’re on the court, she’s very precise. With Ivan, he liked volume, in terms of time spent on the practice court.
“But when I was in Miami with Amélie just now, it was about making sure that the work I was doing was quality. I was still spending a good time on the court but what is important is to be able to play with the intensity that you need to be able to play in matches. It’s not worth being on the court for three and a half, four hours if you’re going at 70 to 80% because when you arrive at the match you need to be intense from the first point to the last. So that’s one of the differences.”
Murray occasionally hits with Mauresmo – and that scenario is rare on the circuit. Most men like to be pushed hard in training or warm-ups against a physical hitting partner. But Murray likes to work on the subtleties as well: “She warmed me up for my matches [in Canada]. I hit with her once in Miami, once at Wimbledon. Obviously if that was my only way of preparing, it wouldn’t be the best. But if I need to do some drills and she’s in one corner, she’s got pretty good control of the ball.”
He revealed that the perceived agonising over the extension of their agreement was not accurate. And the supposed rift in the camp – when his long-time friend and training partner, Dani Vallverdu, was briefly miffed at not being consulted – soon healed. They are a happy team.
“We decided the day after Wimbledon [to formalise their grasscourt trial],” Murray says. “When I spoke to her before the French Open, I said: ‘This is what I want, this is how much time I’m going to need.’ She was thinking about it, if she wanted to commit that much time or not. There would have been no point in saying: ‘Yeah, let’s commit to 25 weeks,’ and after two weeks we hate it. So we said: ‘Why don’t we see how it goes and then decide after that?’ Then we sat down and had a chat the day after and [agreed] it had worked well with me and the team. And that was it.”
As well as getting on personally, Murray and Mauresmo also discovered they shared the same views on how to play the game – because there are innumerable views on the subject in an era where the new gym-bred physicality has both made and broken several players. The search now is for a new or perhaps already tested method of winning.
“It’s similar in a lot of ways in terms of trying to be aggressive, trying to move forward, get up to the net when you can – which I did well [beating João Sousa and John Isner],” Murray explains. “I won almost all of the points when I came to the net. So that’s something that we’ve been working on in Miami.
“And the other thing is variety. That was something that maybe Ivan wasn’t that big on. He was very big on being aggressive and coming forward to finish points but Amélie played with a lot of variety herself. It worked well for her and when it’s used properly, it can make a big difference. It’s been a big part of my game since I was young. That’s the other thing she’s been into.
“I played like that when I was a kid and I did it as well when I came on to the Tour until I was 21, 22. But when I was starting to play winning tennis, high‑percentage solid tennis, not making many mistakes, moving well, maybe I just got away from using that, I dunno … flair a bit on the court. That’s something I wanted to get back to a little bit and try to use in matches.”
He adds: “But it is also difficult: if you have a lot of shots at your disposal, to make the right decisions all of the time is hard. If you can only play one shot, then you don’t have to think about it. If you’re thinking about playing four or five different shots then you have to make your mind up. If you’re going to play that way, it’s about making the right decisions.”
As the US Open looms, the Scot is battling a virus that has infected his game since surgery: losing from winning positions
It is nearly a year since Andy Murray took the biggest gamble of his career, although he does not see the back surgery he underwent in quite such stark terms; it does not do to stir old demons.
On the eve of the US Open, however, Murray faces another, altogether more straightforward challenge, to the spirit rather than the body – and that is rediscovering the intensity and verve that drove him to his breakthrough victory at Flushing Meadows two years ago and carried him to the next peak: that momentous Wimbledon win in July 2013.
Since beating Novak Djokovic in a final of unimaginable intensity and drama, he has not so much drowned as trod water. There have been no titles to celebrate, he has tumbled from No2 in the world to No9 and he has lost 14 of 54 matches, as well as the coach who ignited his tennis. Ivan Lendl’s departure in March was by some way a bigger loss than any he suffered on the court (and it has not been a total disaster on the Tour; he has been in two semi‑finals this year and nine quarter-finals).
He is struggling now, though, with a new and puzzling virus that has infected his game: losing from winning positions. It happened again in Mason, Ohio, last week when Roger Federer overhauled a 4-1 deficit in the second set to put Murray out in the quarter‑finals of the Western & Southern Open. That dispiriting experience followed a similar collapse against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at the same stage of the Rogers Cup in Toronto the previous week – and both echoed his defeat by Rafael Nadal in Rome in May, when he played one of the best sets of his career only to lose from 4-2 up in the third.
The question he and everyone else is asking is: why? Murray is not sure but he is working on it – which sounds like something your local mechanic might tell you if you brought in an old banger on its last legs. The Scot is hardly in that shape but he is concerned.
“I feel good,” he says as we chat on the players’ balcony in Mason. “I feel well, I have practised well. I just need to get that winning mentality back. Last week [losing to Tsonga] I messed the match up a bit.” As Murray sees it: “Guys can come back. That can always happen. When you’re playing against a guy as good as Tsonga, he can always come back. He’s a streaky player as well.”
That “as well” sounded as if Murray was including himself in that category. “But from that position, you don’t want to be losing four games in a row,” he adds. “It’s OK to lose one or two, but not four. That’s something I’ll have to keep an eye on.”
However, in the press conference after losing to Federer – when the virus struck again – Murray was decidedly more downbeat. “It was pretty poor,” he had to admit.
This was becoming a habit, a worrying one. Earlier in his career, Murray suffered from mood and form swings but that inconsistency looked to have been conquered in the two years he was with Lendl. Could the blow of losing his inspiring coach be hurting still – and could Lendl’s successor, Amélie Mauresmo, repair the damage?
At the mention of the Frenchwoman’s name, Murray’s face lights up again and he remains aware that the novelty of the arrangement has not quite faded. “There’s a very big difference in personality, that’s for sure,” he says. “In the work we do before, she’s very demanding. When we’re on the court, she’s very precise. With Ivan, he liked volume, in terms of time spent on the practice court.
“But when I was in Miami with Amélie just now, it was about making sure that the work I was doing was quality. I was still spending a good time on the court but what is important is to be able to play with the intensity that you need to be able to play in matches. It’s not worth being on the court for three and a half, four hours if you’re going at 70 to 80% because when you arrive at the match you need to be intense from the first point to the last. So that’s one of the differences.”
Murray occasionally hits with Mauresmo – and that scenario is rare on the circuit. Most men like to be pushed hard in training or warm-ups against a physical hitting partner. But Murray likes to work on the subtleties as well: “She warmed me up for my matches [in Canada]. I hit with her once in Miami, once at Wimbledon. Obviously if that was my only way of preparing, it wouldn’t be the best. But if I need to do some drills and she’s in one corner, she’s got pretty good control of the ball.”
He revealed that the perceived agonising over the extension of their agreement was not accurate. And the supposed rift in the camp – when his long-time friend and training partner, Dani Vallverdu, was briefly miffed at not being consulted – soon healed. They are a happy team.
“We decided the day after Wimbledon [to formalise their grasscourt trial],” Murray says. “When I spoke to her before the French Open, I said: ‘This is what I want, this is how much time I’m going to need.’ She was thinking about it, if she wanted to commit that much time or not. There would have been no point in saying: ‘Yeah, let’s commit to 25 weeks,’ and after two weeks we hate it. So we said: ‘Why don’t we see how it goes and then decide after that?’ Then we sat down and had a chat the day after and [agreed] it had worked well with me and the team. And that was it.”
As well as getting on personally, Murray and Mauresmo also discovered they shared the same views on how to play the game – because there are innumerable views on the subject in an era where the new gym-bred physicality has both made and broken several players. The search now is for a new or perhaps already tested method of winning.
“It’s similar in a lot of ways in terms of trying to be aggressive, trying to move forward, get up to the net when you can – which I did well [beating João Sousa and John Isner],” Murray explains. “I won almost all of the points when I came to the net. So that’s something that we’ve been working on in Miami.
“And the other thing is variety. That was something that maybe Ivan wasn’t that big on. He was very big on being aggressive and coming forward to finish points but Amélie played with a lot of variety herself. It worked well for her and when it’s used properly, it can make a big difference. It’s been a big part of my game since I was young. That’s the other thing she’s been into.
“I played like that when I was a kid and I did it as well when I came on to the Tour until I was 21, 22. But when I was starting to play winning tennis, high‑percentage solid tennis, not making many mistakes, moving well, maybe I just got away from using that, I dunno … flair a bit on the court. That’s something I wanted to get back to a little bit and try to use in matches.”
He adds: “But it is also difficult: if you have a lot of shots at your disposal, to make the right decisions all of the time is hard. If you can only play one shot, then you don’t have to think about it. If you’re thinking about playing four or five different shots then you have to make your mind up. If you’re going to play that way, it’s about making the right decisions.”
Last edited:
