Jamie Murray: only doubles I care about are on the tennis court

27 june of 2009

British player lives just around the corner from Wimbledon, but is always focused on his tennis, not the many distractions.


I believe it’s a good film but I am starting to think I will never find out. I bought a DVD of Scarface, the gangster movie, about four years ago but never got round to watching it. I was going to watch it the other night, but then I realised it was three hours long and decided I was never going to manage that.

I live in Wimbledon. It is great to have your own place to go back to at night. When you are at Wimbledon, you see so many people through the day, you are meeting people all the time and there is so much noise.

But here, I can go home, close the door and enjoy my own company — and the silence.

If you walk down the road from my place into Wimbledon Village, the place is always packed throughout the fortnight and has a great buzz around it. People watch the tennis and then come up for dinner and drinks. It’s good fun for the two weeks and you can see lots of people in the restaurants and pubs.

The trouble is, when I am playing, I can’t join in. These last few years I have been going right through the fortnight in competition, so there has been no chance for me to get involved.

Fortunately, I live a little way from the Village so I am not disturbed by the noise. Sometimes, after a big match, you have the adrenalin going through you and it’s hard to settle down and sleep.

I don’t have a routine, I just go with the flow. Wimbledon doesn’t start until midday so most players will play late afternoon to early evening, which is nice as it gives you most of the day to prepare and get yourself sorted out for your match.

There’s no rushing around unless it’s to find extra tickets to get your family and friends in. I think that’s probably the most stressful thing about Wimbledon!

Trouble is that, at night, by the time you get home, there is not much time left and you just want some food and to get to sleep. I stayed with Andy at his apartment for a couple of years but now I have my own place, I like to go back there and be quiet.

It is so nice to be at home for three to four weeks and be in your own place. The other ten months of the year you don’t get the opportunity to relax like that. I only have to travel five minutes in the car to Wimbledon because it’s on my doorstep. I know it sounds strange taking the car, but it’s better than walking. That would take about half an hour and you don’t want to be taking unnecessary exercise if you have to play five sets of tennis at Wimbledon — although three sets is the top requirement in the mixed doubles, which I am still in, and I had a good win with Liezel Huber, my doubles partner, late Thursday evening over Rik de Voest and Raquel Kops-Jones.

Still took two hours, though. After that, you are tired enough when you get home. Which is why I am struggling to see Scarface. Wonder when I will . . .

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Jamie Murray confident he and Liezel Huber can be winning combination at Wimbledon

29 june of 2009




Word to the wise: Murray and Huber confer on vital tactics in the heat of mixed doubles battle at Wimbledon


Bit of a minor celebration going on last night. Had dinner with my grandparents, Roy and Shirley, who have come down from Scotland to spend the week, after a really nice day off. I was feeling a bit of back pain, so I decided to take it easy after playing late on Saturday night. ( )

Back to it today, though. My mixed doubles partner, Liezel Huber, wants to run through some practice before we play again tomorrow. She has her eyes on the Wimbledon title and really, really wants to win this one. I must say I am up for it as well. Two Murrays in Wimbledon finals in the same year — now that would be something.

Liezel is fantastic. She is not the No 1 ranked women’s doubles player for nothing. She has fantastic motivation and is brilliant on the court. I really like playing with her and she keeps saying we have a grand slam win in us after narrowly missing out in the US Open final last year.

We are very different, although we really enjoy each other’s company. And we only got together by accident — I actually asked her women’s doubles team-mate, Cara Black, originally. I was at a loose end after Wimbledon in 2007, when I had that fantastic win in the mixed doubles with Jelena Jankovic. Jelena wanted to concentrate on her singles career, so I had nobody to play with as the US Open approached.

I asked Cara and she had already found a partner. Next thing I knew, Liezel rang and decided she wanted to give it a try and it has worked out really well.

Picking a partner is a really strange one. You have no idea how it is going to work out until you start playing. There is no scientific process, you just hope it will happen. You might have two really good singles players on the court and it doesn’t work out, or you might have somebody alongside you who is a really big-hitter, but that stops you finding any rhythm. It’s tough to say what is going to be good and what is going to be bad.

What you do need to be successful is continuity. Players get together sometimes for the two weeks of a tournament and it is just a matter of what happens. But you need somebody to fight for you and who believes it matters a lot — like Liezel. That is why she believes we can win as our relationship builds and is stopping any other women approaching me right now.

I was disappointed when Jelena didn’t want to carry on after that Wimbledon win. That relationship was an accident; we had met at a party and I knew her coach. A few days before Wimbledon, we bumped into each other on the practice courts, I said: “How about it?”, and she decided to give it a try. I don’t think she had any idea what she was letting herself in for, though. As we got nearer and nearer the final, people got more and more interested in us, asking if we were dating and stuff like that. It was a bit embarrassing but good fun and our relationship on court was fantastic, laughing and joking. It was all a bit of a dream and we could hardly believe we got to the final. We were just as relaxed on the Centre Court, still giggling and having fun in front of a massive crowd who were really rooting for us. It was the best experience.

One of the things Jelena told everyone was that she promised to kiss me for every good point I won. That set everybody thinking I had a crush on her — nobody asked if she had a crush on me!

Anyway, I am still waiting to collect on those kisses. I might remind her when I see her next. Liezel is very different. She is married and Tony, her husband, is her coach and has become a good friend.

She is very determined and focused and knows exactly when to joke and when to be serious and what to do in matches, which is why I hope we can do really well this year at Wimbledon.

I can’t remember but people keep telling me Liezel hit me on the head with a water bottle at the Australian Open this year to gee me up.

Sounds about right, I have to admit. Prefer the kisses option, though.

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Jamie Murray follows Andy out of Wimbledon with mixed doubles



Jamie Murray and Liezel Huber confer during their defeat in the mixed doubles semi-finals.

As if one Wimbledon semi-final defeat was not enough for the Murray family to take, the disappointment of Andy's loss in the singles was compounded last night as Jamie Murray and Liezel Huber were denied a place in the final of the mixed doubles. Murray and Huber found Mark Knowles of the Bahamas and Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany too hot to handle as they went out 6-2, 7-5, the second year in a row that the pair have been beaten in the semi-finals.

Putting Murray and Huber on Centre Court immediately after Andy's draining four-set defeat by Andy Roddick was either an attempted exercise in catharsis or a cruel joke. In the end it seemed more like the latter as they were unable to get the better of the No9 seeds, despite a valiant fight-back in the second set. "It was weird," Murray said.

"It was the first time in my life that I didn't want to play on Centre Court. They said to us that, if the [Murray-Roddick] match went to five sets, we would go on Court Three. Obviously it was disappointing and then five minutes later you are on, playing your match. It was a strange position to be in and one I probably wouldn't want to be in again."

Since they had saved a match point in their opening-round match, the momentum seemed to be with Murray and Huber, who together with Bob Bryan had won the French Open title last month. They were semi-finalists a year ago and their win over Mike Bryan and Bethanie Mattek-Sands en route to the last four had led many to believe Jamie could make it to the final for the second time in three years, having won the title with Jelena Jankovic of Serbia two years ago.

Last night he and Huber were second-best throughout as Knowles and Groenefeld teased them with a combination of huge hitting – mostly from the German – and pinpoint lobs from Knowles. Huber's serve was broken twice in the first set and, although they broke Knowles when he served for the match at 5-4 in the second set, the loss of Murray's serve in the following game proved crucial and the match was decided when Groenefeld slammed a forehand down the line.

The smiles when Jamie won with Jankovic have been replaced with a more serious look on the elder Murray's face in recent times as he has struggled to forge a long-term partnership with anyone in the men's doubles. The Scot has had eight partners this year alone and his ranking is likely to plummet to around the 100 mark in the next few weeks. The mixed event has done little to lift his confidence and he said he would now have to drop down to the Challenger Tour in the next few months. ( )

Jamie admitted he was unlikely to see his defeated sibling after the match. "I don't think that I'll see Andy because I think he's gone home already," Jamie said. "I watched almost all of it [the men's semi-final]. It was a tough, tough day for him, that's for sure. It was just a bit unfortunate that it was such a disappointment for him to lose.

"I think anyone who loses such a close match in the semi-finals of Wimbledon is going to be pretty disappointed with how things have turned out, especially, I guess more so, being British, but I think anybody who'd lost that match would be pretty beat up about it.

"For Andy to be in the semi-finals is a big thing. It was a first for him as well, let's not forget that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/03/jamie-murray-wimbledon-mixed-doubles-defeat