NOBODY could argue that Andy Murray has had an easy ride to the top of British tennis. If you want a better idea of the determination and sacrifice it has taken to get this far, then Hitting Back spells it out.
Of course, a sporting pedigree helps
: his grandfather, Roy Erskine, played for Hibs in the 1950s, while his mother, Judy, is a former Scotland and Great Britain internationalist and national tennis coach. Andy and elder brother Jamie followed suit.
Andy could have taken trials for Rangers, but chose tennis. At 15, disillusioned with the quality of coaching in the UK, he enrolled at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona. "I went from being a boy in Dunblane to a tennis player in Spain. It was scary, but it was awesome too".
The wake-up call came when talking to a young Rafael Nadal after losing to Spain in the European Under-16 team championships. Nadal was already practising with people like Carlos Moya, with a top 10 ranking on the tour.
Murray's account of his early development is fascinating. The photographs, too, offer an intimate insight into Murray's early family life.
But here, Hitting Back turns away from the autobiographical to become something of a manifesto. He rails against the coaching set-up in the UK and the British mentality of jealousy and negativity.
He wants British coaches to enforce a greater work ethic and talks about his own long-term ideal of hoping to develop an academy of sporting excellence.
There is a lot of bitterness. Murray sees a lot of obstacles having been placed in his way. He could have had a wildcard entry to the US Open in 2005 but the LTA did not want to offer a US player a reciprocal wildcard entry to Wimbledon as it was "tacky". Murray still qualified, but resents the fact that he had to play gruelling qualifiers instead of preparing as he would have liked.
He rails against the media too. While he senses that the tennis authorities are obsessed with not allowing anything negative to get into the media rather than address the parlous state of tennis development, his own experience with the media has left him bitter. He explains why he will no longer speak to the BBC after being trapped into commenting on the issue of corruption and then, he feels, having his views misrepresented.
Murray lays to rest the allegation that he is anti-English. His widely quoted comments that he wanted "whoever was playing England" to win at the 2006 World Cup came after he had been joking around with Tim Henman, who had teased him about Scotland's failure to qualify for the finals. Murray explains he has mixed ancestry, an English girlfriend and is happy to live in London.
Murray has been criticised for bringing out an 'autobiography' prematurely – he has only just turned 21.
But Hitting Back is also a platform, a soapbox for someone who feels he has been misrepresented as a grumpy young man but who has still risen to great heights in his sport yet still craves patience from the British public as he does things his way in pursuit of a grand slam title, and perhaps even the Wimbledon title that public would wish for him.
BEN JARVISThe full article contains 566 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
