Monday, 27 August 2012

US Open 2012: Andy Murray dreams of converting Olympic gold into grand slam glory

You might not realise it, but Andy Murray has already experienced the elation of winning a Grand Slam trophy. Even if it was only in his sleep, soon after losing that dramatic Wimbledon final to Roger Federer two months ago.


As he woke up, he was not too happy to feel the trophy slipping from his grasp.

Oh well. In tennis, there are always more chances to dream. And after the glorious reverie of the Olympic Games, Murray returns on Monday to his primary quest. The one that would make him Britain’s first grand slam champion for 76 years. If he does it for real, this is one achievement that could never be taken away.

For Murray, 2012 has at least thrown up some different questions to the standard “Will he ever win one of these things?” At the start of the year, it was “Could Ivan Lendl be the missing piece in the puzzle?” Then, during some demoralising losses on clay, it was “Can he get over this back injury in time for Wimbledon?”

Happily, the answers to these questions turned out to be “Yes”, though there were moments when both seemed doubtful. And now, after the way Murray played in the two tournaments at the All England Club, there is another, more positive, question abroad: “Could this be Murray’s time?” Most of the tennis mavens, from Boris Becker to Mats Wilander, seem to believe it is.

The gold medal clearly has the potential to be a stepping stone. Over the weekend, Murray was asked how the feeling of being Olympic champion manifested itself, and whether he woke up every morning thinking “Yesss!”
Related Articles


His answer was characteristically quirky. “It was definitely like that for a good week, 10 days afterwards,” he said. “After Wimbledon, I dreamt I won Wimbledon, and I woke up in the morning and I was just starting to feel better. That didn’t help.

“Then a few days after the Olympics, I dreamt that I lost in the final of the Olympics. Obviously waking up remembering that I had won was nice. That was when I was in Toronto. So, yeah, you think about it a lot. But once you start getting on the match court again, you never forget about it, but that feeling is a bit different.”

Murray returns to the match court this afternoon at Flushing Meadows, against the world No 73 Alex Bogomolov Jnr. Every round of the US Open will throw up a challenge, but you would expect him to negotiate the first week without reverting to his infamous “drama queen” persona. With Lendl in his corner, Murray has become a far calmer, more businesslike presence on the court.

The first thing Lendl said to him after the Olympic final was: “You picked the right one to win first.” Lendl’s point was that grand slams come around quarterly, not quadrennially. But we should not lose sight of the fact that Murray’s major objective was always to win a slam — a five-set, seven-match slam.

If the job is to be accomplished here in New York, then Lendl is surely the ultimate guide. Murray’s coach reached eight straight US Open finals between 1982 and 1989, winning three of them and creating such an interruption to American hegemony that an exasperated Sports Illustrated ran a photo of him on the cover in 1986 under the headline “The champion nobody cares about”.

Lendl plotted his domination of Flushing Meadows with obsessive precision and his masterstroke was commissioning an exact replica of the courts used on site to be built at his homestead in Connecticut, even resurfacing them annually to the same specifications.

“I didn’t have to come here for practices,” Lendl said at the weekend, “so out of the 14 days I was here seven times. That is a great help because it’s very taxing physically and mentally to be here. Just being home, you’re not relying on anybody’s schedules except your own.

"You finish, you jump in the pool and play with your dogs, have lunch on the table, take a nap, go and play golf, whatever you please to do.”

Lendl lives in Florida these days, unfortunately for Murray, so the same practice options are not available. But the two men clearly share a view about the best way to prepare for a major tournament.

Murray explained on Saturday that he has moved to a quieter hotel, and will also be “trying to make sure I don’t spend too much time around the courts, because it will be very busy and quite loud.”

Since arriving at his New York hideaway, Murray has ceased to be troubled by nocturnal visions of trophies won and trophies lost, which hopefully indicates a relaxed frame of mind. Asked over the weekend whether he had dreamed about the US Open, he laughed and replied “No, not yet. But I’ll keep you posted.”


No comments:

Post a Comment