NEW YORK—Four years ago, wandering through the back practice courts at Indian Wells, I caught the tail end of an Andy Murray workout with Brad Gilbert. Murray was sitting by the side of the court, staring straight down. Gilbert stood above him and said, in a pointed voice, “I want one good half hour out of you, right now.” Murray didn’t look up.
From what I could tell, Gilbert didn’t get his good half hour. Instead, Murray, who seemed to be beyond anger at that point, did a long sleepwalk through a practice set against his partner that day, Richard Gasquet. Besides his obvious apathy, the most notable aspect of this set were the compliments that Murray gave himself as it wore on. He took a big, uncaring swing at a forehand. When it went, accidentally, for a winner, he said, in his dour monotone, “Way to go for it.” A few minutes later, Murray came to the net and watched Gasquet’s passing shot float past him and over the baseline. As it landed, Murray muttered, “Well left." It was hard to tell whether he was mocking Gilbert, or himself, or the universe. I walked away wondering if, despite his talent, a person whose dark streak was that dark could ever have the self-belief to win big. No top athlete had sounded like Murray since John McEnroe, who also seemed most comfortable when he was bashing himself. I liked the Scot right away, naturally; there was something raw and human about him.
Four years later, I still like Andy Murray, I still have the same questions about whether his mindset and mental makeup can lead him to a Grand Slam win, and I’m still listening to him give himself sarcastic compliments. Today Murray, despite playing a superb, airtight first two sets, was agitated from the start—it took him exactly two games to begin jawing with his player’s box. By the third set, the inevitable, mostly unprintable meltdown was underway; there was no way to avoid it today. It reached its peak at 3-3, when Murray missed three returns. After the third, he walked to the back of the court and told himself, “Good returning, man, um hmm, yep.”
Can Murray, who has reached the semis of all four majors this year, win one of them while lacerating himself so severely? He won today, 7-5, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (2), by gradually letting the negative energy out and replacing it with something more positive. By the end of the third set, Murray was firing himself up—in his own difficult, ambivalent, petulant, roiling, emotional way, of course. He said earlier this year that this is how he operates best, and that trying to hold the negative stuff in or pretend it doesn’t exist leaves him flat.
Is it the best approach? Looking for guidance from past champions doesn’t yield any easy answers. McEnroe won by letting the negativity flow. Bjorn Borg won by ignoring it, for as long as he could. The more recent trend has been toward positivity and self-control. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal play, more the most part, with a conspicuous lack of anger or negative energy, and Novak Djokovic’s fortunes have risen in inverse proportion to the frustration he’s shown on court. But like McEnroe, it’s hard to imagine Murray’s talent without his temper. Each of them had a wide variety of shots to choose from, and a lot of potential they knew they had to live up to.
When visitors would come to the Port Washington academy in the early 1970s, Harry Hopman would point to a young McEnroe and say, “This one’s going to be No. 1 in the world.” Murray’s coach in Barcelona, Pato Alvarez, firmly believed, from the first time that he saw the Scottish teenager hit a ball, that he would reach the same position. For both players, anything short of the best is enough to make them go batty, and Murray has been lingering just short of the best for a while now. Alvarez himself says that Murray, whom he described as a quiet, almost invisible kid, needs to stop acting out to reach his potential. But you get the feeling that that ship has sailed. It's rage or bust by now.
Murray gets his share of unsolicited advice about his on-court attitude, but it pales in comparison to the amount he receives about his tactics. He’s not aggressive enough; he doesn’t exploit his talent around the net; he lets his opponents play their games; his safe approach works against the second-tier, but not against the first; he needs to let his forehand rip.
There’s some truth to all of these criticisms, but whenever Murray talks about what he’s thinking on court, it’s almost always in the opposite direction of his detractors. He said after his loss to Nadal at Wimbledon that it showed him he couldn’t beat Rafa by overpowering him (I’m not sure I agree with that), and that he would play a more controlled game against him in the future. Today Murray’s tactical talk revolved again around playing safe, not trying too much, and letting his big opponent, John Isner, self-destruct if he could.
And whatever we may like to see him do, that is Murray’s strength, a fact that Isner reiterated today. Asked about Murray’s return of serve, Isner said, “It’s very good. I think more so than his return is everything after the return. You know, he’ll block the serve back and then he’ll just—he plays incredible defense: that’s what he does.”
There was no sense in Isner’s words that he thought Murray should try to do anything else—from a fellow player's point of view, if you can beat just about anyone with defense, why would you try to do anything else? Some colleagues in the press room today wondered why Murray didn’t try to push Isner around more and come to net; after all, the way to beat a giant is to make the giant move. Murray, as usual, had a different idea.
The question is whether what works against someone like Isner is going to work against guys like Nadal and Djokovic and Federer—the latter ran Murray off the court in the final here three years ago. But Andy Murray at 24 isn’t that young anymore. Whatever changes he can manage to make in his game or mentality will almost surely be minor, incremental. As both he and Isner realize, there are no perfect tennis players who can do everything equally well; while strokes can be improved, it’s much tougher to change habits or adopt new tactics. Murray will win with his own game—tennis rewards the person who knows his strengths and weaknesses and plays within them.
We should wish for this for Andy Murray. Who else could we imagine walking out to the middle of Centre Court in front of roaring British fans, taking the Wimbledon winner’s trophy in his hands, and muttering under his breath, “Nice job, um hmm, yep.”