Andy Murray playing snooker with Stephen Hendry
Andy-centric summary of their conversation under the cut.
has a snooker table at home bc he used to play him a lot, his wife gifted it to him after the 2016 season and it never gets used anymore
preferred the tournament in Shanghai to Beijing
whether he’s used to hearing “Sir Andy Murray”: says he spends most of his time with friends and family these days where that title doesn’t get used a lot :D
says his mum played tennis nationally but wasn’t an amazing player
he was “not good” at tennis in the beginning, his mum told him later that at the time she thought he was terrible in comparison to Jamie
other sports he did as a kid: table tennis, golf, badminton, squash, gymnastics
now as a dad he realises what a big commitment it was for his parents to get him and his brother to competitions all across the UK once they got better
when he moved to Spain as a 15 year old he was still studying for school but he doesn’t have any formal qualifications and regrets that and would advise his kids to stay in school in the same situation, “I wish I’d spent more time focusing on my education”
he regrets that he didn’t learn more Spanish while in Spain (he went to an American school there) and says how Brits are lazy with learning languages “because we can get away with it” seeing as so many people speak English
moving to Spain was also the moment where he felt like tennis became his job, that’s when he knew he was serious about it as a career
the training in Spain was probably “too intense”, 5-6 hours a day with a break and school in the middle, 5 days a week
“across all sports, everyone has worked hard – if you want to become great, you have to work hard” but there’s different ways to go about it, for example the big 3 all had very different styles of training
both in tennis and in golf you can easily recognise an amateur by the fact they don’t follow through for long enough after a shot
he’s “not a massive believer in talent, that someone is born to play [a certain sport]”, he thinks genetics must play a role but people wouldn’t have gotten to the place they are without working hard, or having family members take them to places where they can play the sport, or having someone encourage/push them to pursue it
“at the very, very top, the best players are the ones who are the strongest mentally” – generally, but there’s always outliers and “people who that are unbelievably good at what they do, and they’re headcases”
he feels like his first breakthrough win came actually in practice, there were top 10 players at the academy in Spain that he got to play with and he was “doing alright” against them in practice sessions
it was funny as a 15 year old when he was playing there against top players bc his friends from the academy would hang over the fence and “behave so obnoxiously”
when he was part of the Davis Cup team as a hitting partner for Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski and felt like he could compete with them “that gave me a bit of confidence”; and then the US Open Junior title win at 17
he never thought about “winning for Scotland” when he was playing but was always very touched by people in Scotland being proud of him
at Wimbledon he didn’t feel he was playing for the British fans or for the public first and foremost, but he did feel the pressure to perform because of their expectations. particularly towards the end of the tournament it was tough, “you try to block it out as much as you can but it’s not easy”
the main point of using sports psychology for him was to come up with routines and coping mechanisms
if he were to play tennis left-handed he would “probably do alright against and amateur, a club-level player”
“Djokovic, when I was helping him” used to warm up a bit with the left hand (interesting to me that he rarely says “coaching”, he always says he was “helping” Novak)
about whether he had friends at the top of the game while he was playing: “not at the top of the game”; he often practiced with Rafa and Novak but only at the start of his career with Roger, who after a year or two stopped practicing with him (and also never practiced with Rafa and Novak anymore), Andy liked practicing with them as a chance to see where his game was at “but I was never going to dinner with them, whereas now I would love to do that”
“you can’t really be totally open” with a rival, and when he’s socialising with friends and family he wants to be e.g. able to tell them he’s been struggling with something, but you can’t do that with a rival
a weakness he would have loved to fix was his second serve, he feels like he didn’t spent enough time thinking about technique while he was playing and that it was a technical flaw he could have done something about
endless ball bouncing gets mentioned and Andy says that can be “a bit of a yip” for some players; Novak gets mentioned by Stephen Hendry as someone who bounces the ball an irritating amount of times, Andy does not react to that comment at all
technical changes towards the end of your career are difficult to implement bc you tend to not stick to them when they’re not working immediately, and you know at the back of your mind that you don’t have much time left in your career
throughout Andy comments on his own performance at Snooker, sometimes with “that’s a good shot, that felt good”, but mostly with “ah, that’s so poor”
proudest career moment is the gold medal in London; when talking about how important the Olympics are to tennis players he uses Novak’s win in Paris as an example, remarking on the fact that he was “significantly more emotional” there than when winning any of his slams
about playing golf several hours a day: “I love practicing”
“nothing is gonna replace playing tennis” but he needed the routine of something he can play and try to get better at; “it filled a little bit of that void” of the tennis routine and practice
his golf handicap is down to 1.4 now and has improved this quickly “because I have no job”
and that's a wrap. we end on Andy having no job :D
