The place is packed with the youngsters that Murray has enchanted this past week. They are all on their feet, every sinew stretching towards the TV screen high on the wall. Less than a minute after his tired legs haul Murray off court, these kids are making the opposite journey and they will be out there on the clay until the sun goes down.
“It has been great for them,” says Gavin Vickery, the Australian coach who oversaw Murray’s work here when he was recovering from a serious knee injury two years ago. “Usually the level of interest doesn’t rise that much for Wimbledon, but this year — definitely. There isn’t a kid in the programme here that doesn’t know about Andy, he’s a local hero, someone they can look up to and try to emulate.”
This defeat will have taught Murray one lesson. Martina Navratilova acclaimed his many talents on the morning of the match, but doubted his conditioning, the fault that cost him a place in the fourth round at Wimbledon. Karen Ross is the high performance coach for Tennis Scotland and shifts from one side of her seat to the other as the balance of power flip-flops similarly in the fourth set. “His defeat at Queen’s showed that fitness might be an issue,” she says. “He loves being on court, he loves doing what he does best. If it is a problem, if this run shows him that, then it won’t be a problem for long. He will get to work on it.”
Two years ago he had to fix another problem. Aged 16, he returned from training camp in Barcelona with a stabbing pain in his right knee, the result of a congenital problem in the joint combined with the intense competition of the junior circuit and a sudden growth spurt.
The Scottish Institute of Sport decided to unload all their resources and research on him. Sports psychologists broke down his mental attitude towards his forced time-out, performance analysis software reshaped his service action and improved his mobility, and he hit the gym to get back into the shape.
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He embraced their ground- breaking methods, psychological, physical and technical, so heartily that his recovery is now used as a case study at the Institute, based at the University of Stirling, a mile down the road from Bridge of Allan. When he was better, and when the sun came out, he was back on the red clay at Bridge of Allan. He will find it harder to have a quiet game when he comes back home again.