Novak Djokovic, fresh and showered after a gruelling practice session, throws an unselfconscious arm across the shoulders of Andy Murray, whose grey T-shirt has turned almost black with sweat and is already weighed down by the expanse of an enormous racket bag. Off the pair walk towards the locker rooms, friends reacquainted after a very different past five weeks.
On the back of his Australian Open heroics in Melbourne, Djokovic has gone on to win the Dubai Duty Free tournament and he is pressing Roger Federer, whom he beat for the second time in a fortnight there, for the No 2 ranking (although Federer pretends he hasn’t noticed). Every muscle seems that little bit more toned, his disposition more effervescent than normal.
Murray has played one match since his straight-sets funk in the Australian final, a very patchy affair in Rotterdam where he lost to Marcos Baghdatis, of Cyprus. He preferred to sidestep Dubai, has been running on the sands of South Beach, Miami and is ready to go again, buffed up, straight-talking, thoughtful.
The pair are in Indian Wells, California, for the first ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the year, the BNP Paribas Open, played against a glorious backdrop of snow-tipped mountains and harsh desert scrub.
Djokovic won it in 2008 on the back of his first Australian triumph; Murray was beaten in the 2009 final by Rafael Nadal when the wind came down from the peaks and conspired to blow his game all over the place.
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It was as still as the night yesterday as the Scot pondered life. He has done much pondering since January 31; indeed after the Melbourne defeat, another kick in the grand-slam guts, he stayed up until 4.30 in the morning, thinking it through, deciding what he could have done better and resolving that he would emerge stronger for it.
“I felt good that morning,” he said. “Sure, I was disappointed, but happy that I was able to talk properly about the match and what I need to improve, and just looking at things differently to how I would have done in the past.”
Thinking straight and playing straight, though, remain two very different animals.
“Last year [after his loss to Federer in the Australian final] it took me quite a long time to start playing well again,” Murray said. “In fact I’d been playing garbage for four, five months and then the Wimbledon loss [to Nadal in the semi-finals] was a hard one again.
“When you get close to something it can be difficult to motivate yourself, but I have to deal better this year with the same situation.”
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He talks of subtle shifts of emphasis in his game, though he does not want to go into specifics. Wait and see, he says. He is probably fed up to the back teeth with people telling him to be more dynamic on court. “What does being more aggressive mean?” he asks. “It’s just an easy way of saying someone needs to change their game.
“I think playing one metre closer to the baseline, you’re going to take time away from your opponent, you’re going to have more chances to come to the net, it’s something as easy as that. But it takes time to practise because essentially, though the court’s the same size, you’re having to hit the ball from a different position on the court, so you have to get used to that.
“When you want to improve certain things, you can’t do it just by practising them all the time the same way, you need to make some small adjustments, technical changes as well. It’s a combination.
“It’s one thing practising things but when you go and play a match for the first time, you don’t know whether or not they’re going to work and are you going to be a bit nervous. I think I am practising the right things, I’ll see how they go in the matches.”
Perhaps Murray was too stubborn, too rigid, in the past. Maybe he did not want to compromise his game and he knows now that that approach has got him so far, but not far enough.
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“If you’re winning a lot of matches playing with a particular shot, you might not want to change it, whereas now I don’t really have a problem trying things out, seeing whether they work or not,” he said. “If they don’t, that’s fine, but you might as well give it a go because you’ve got three or four months before the next slam.”
So here is another fascinating juncture in Murray’s career. And perhaps we ought to pause occasionally to remember that he has reached three grand-slam finals. When was the last time the British game has such riches? Seventy years ago.
“I think 99 per cent of players would bite your hand off if you offered them three grand-slam finals,” he said. “I’ve done that, but I want to try to do more. That’s all I’m trying to do. I don’t know whether people think that [is good enough] or not, to me it’s not really an issue. It’s you guys’ job to let people know how tough it is. All I can do is work hard to try and win one of the grand slams and I hope it’ll come.”
Here this week, the guiding hand is that of Alex Corretja, the former world No 2 who reached two French Open finals and is the sort of person who you would send in to calm anyone thinking of leaping from a ledge.
“It’s good to have someone there that knows how you might be feeling, in terms of motivation and improving,” Murray said. “Alex is someone that got the best out of his game. He would be the first to say that. He worked incredibly hard and got very close to No 1 and winning grand slams, so it’s good to have someone like that with me.
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“Whether I’ve got to my peak in terms of potential, I don’t know, but I’m still trying to improve.”