Taking heed of the words of others from bygone generations has never been Andy Murray’s strongest attribute. Yet as he tries to come to terms with another Grand Slam disappointment, he could do far worse than listen to the most successful tennis player in history.
Margaret Court may have played the game over the best of three sets rather than five, and prevailed for the most part in those black and white days before the sport went open. Yet the Australian still won a record 62 major titles at singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles.
“More than anything, winning a Grand Slam is a battle within yourself,” said Court, whose titles came between 1960 and 1973. “It gets down to how you handle the pressure in your own mind, more than how you handle the game of anybody else.”
Once again, as Murray mumbled his initial reaction to coming second best to one of the game’s elite trio, his first vow was to work harder, improve his fitness and raise his game. Yet to others who have been there, the predominant issue is the mind.
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Andy had to do something to stop the slide but he didn’t seem to know how At 24, Murray is in his prime physically and apart from adding more bite to his second serve, there is little that can be done to improve his game. But psychologically he still trails in the wake of Rafael Nadal, whose mental resilience was again paramount in his 5-7 6-2 6-2 6-4 win on Friday.
In the view of three-time champion Boris Becker, Murray is hugely inferior in this respect to Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. “Between the ears Murray is far more fragile than Rafa, Novak or Roger,” insisted Becker. “Deep down he is just not emotionally strong enough to win a major right now.
“We know Andy is a very dedicated sportsman. He trains and trains to get better. He’s prepared to push himself on the practice court, the track and in the gym. He is playing to become a champion but he must get tougher in the mind to prevent these slides.”
Becker, like Nadal himself and so many others, identified the basic forehand miss at 15-30 during the third game of the second set as the shot that effectively ended Murray’s hopes. The court was wide open yet a split-second of over-anxiety saw the fourth seed hit the ball long and immediately the momentum switched.
Murray went on to lose the next seven games and although the match still had an hour and three-quarters to run, the Scot was never in it and as he trudged back to the sanctuary of the locker room, abject regret was deeply ingrained on every facial pore.
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Nadal recalled: “He had an easy forehand in the middle of the court and he missed. So that was probably the turning point of the match. After that he had a bad game with his serve; unforced error with the forehand, double–fault, and after he missed a smash. Before Andy was playing the most complete tennis. Afterwards he probably lost a little bit the intensity of the beginning.”
Becker maintained Murray had the opportunity to regroup at the end of the second set, leave the court on the pretext of answering a call of nature and use the brief break to change both sweat-soaked shirt and crumpled mindset.
“Andy had to do something to stop the slide but he didn’t seem to know how,” said Becker. “Of course it was illegal to talk to a coach or something but just refocusing his thoughts was the important thing. It’s probably the hardest task of all when the whole of the tennis world is watching. In the respect of mental strength in such situations, he is a long way behind the top three guys in the world.”
Murray has habitually been reluctant to employ the services of a sports psychologist. Four years ago, when he struggled to overcome the wrist injury that ruled him out of the French Open and Wimbledon, Murray consulted Robert Forzoni and maintained the experience was beneficial. But the relationship was shortlived.
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After losing January’s Australian Open final so lamely to Djokovic, Murray went into a depressive tailspin that left him searching for both inspiration and any remnant of confidence. He suffered ignominious opening-round defeats at the American Masters 1000 series events in Indian Wells and Miami, once his favoured hunting grounds, to Donald Young, ranked 143, and Alex Bogomolov Jr, the world No 118.
Many close to the player were convinced he needed to speak to an expert in the vagaries of the sporting mind and initial contact was made with Don McPherson, the Bath-based sports psychologist who worked closely with Ian Woosnam during the Welshman’s march to the Masters title 20 years ago and who more recently has worked predominantly in the field of Formula One.
A resurgence in Murray’s form meant no consultation was arranged but McPherson watched with interest as the Scot’s game unravelled against Nadal and immediately identified the problem. “The dominant force in all of this is a thing the Chinese call the monkey mind,” he said. “It’s the thing that constantly chatters and darts around in the mind like a monkey swinging through the jungle when things turn wrong. During the first set, Murray was playing subconsciously and the monkey mind had nothing to feed upon because everything was going right. But once he made that bad mistake with the forehand the monkey mind took over and kept jabbering to him that he better do things right again, which of course only served to heighten anxiety and make things worse. He began to play consciously.
“It’s a skill to be able to turn off the monkey mind and reclaim the subconscious state. It’s something that I do all the time with motor racing drivers who are in far more danger because if they respond negatively to a mistake they make and then try all that much harder, they could end up driving too fast into a wall. In my view Andy Murray is not mentally weak but he does need his brain tuning in order to control his monkey mind.”
Next weekend at Glasgow’s Braehead Arena, Murray will end a 22-month exile from Britain’s Davis Cup squad when he spearheads Leon Smith’s team in the inglorious depths of the Euro/Africa Zone Group Two against Luxembourg. Not being a man who enjoys lengthy holidays, he will then head off to Florida for another concerted training block at the University of Miami before returning to tournament play in three weeks in Los Angeles.
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Murray will probably stop over in Las Vegas to link up with his occasional coach Darren Cahill who, by virtue of not being employed directly by the Scot, is freer than previous mentors to make objective criticisms of exactly what he did wrong against Nadal. Whether steps are taken to address the workings of the mind, rather than the running power of the legs, the aerobic capacity of the lungs or muscular strength of the racket arm, remains the overriding issue in the battle of Andy Murray to raise himself to the same level as Nadal, Djokovic and Federer, and one day claim that elusive Grand Slam title.
2 Players who lost their first three Wimbledon semi-finals. They are Britons Andy Murray and Tim Henman, who also lost a fourth semi-final