Authors: Andy Murray

Hitting Back (16 page)

BOOK: Hitting Back

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I went into the contest well aware that there was no pressure
on me. No one expected me to win, not against a man who was
on a 55-match winning streak and who had only been beaten
by one guy, Rafa Nadal, all year. The chances of him losing to
a 19-year-old kid ranked 21 in the world, who had never been
beyond the fourth round of a grand slam had to look pretty
slim.

We both began pretty badly, trading breaks of serve. My
first service percentage was disgusting, somewhere around 33.
I was feeling strangely tired because I was so uptight inside. I
was seriously worked up about playing him and it seemed to
be draining the energy out of me. Despite that and my
inefficient serving, Federer didn't seem his usual dominant self
either. It was I who reached set point in the first set and,
perhaps to some surprise, I sealed it with an ace.

The second set produced a slightly higher standard of tennis,
but I was suffering from the same physical problem. I was so
tired I couldn't feel my legs. They seemed so dead and so heavy.
I think part of the problem was the fact that I had been failing
to serve out my last few matches. I would be in a really
dominant position and then allow my opponent back into the
match. It happened against David Ferrer when I was leading
6–2 5–0 in Toronto – the final score was 6–2 7–6. It happened
again when I was leading 6–2 5–3 against Tim. That kind of
thing preys on your mind. You can't stop thinking about it and
it affects your game with doubt.

Against Federer, I refused to let myself think like that.
Instead I was thinking: 'Just forget about it. You can do this
You can do this.' I wasn't panicking like I was in the other
matches. I held it all together and on my second match point,
Federer came into the net and I hit a backhand pass down the
line to beat him. The relief was astounding. I just slumped back
in my courtside chair and put a towel over my head in a daze.
It felt as if I'd won the whole tournament, not just a match in
round two.

It gives you such a shot of belief, a result like that. It told me
that one day I could win a grand slam. There was now a voice
in my head saying: OK, you've now got a good chance of being
one of the best players in the world. Beating Federer was
always something I had wanted to do, but until you actually
win against a guy like him, it's tough to imagine it happening.

I didn't see much of him immediately afterwards. He left
there pretty quickly. It can't have been very enjoyable for him.
He doesn't normally get into a bad mood on court, but during
the match he received a warning for hitting a ball over a fence.
Maybe he was tired. At the end of the match, he just shook my
hand and said something like 'Good job'. Nothing too deep,
but it sounded pretty good to me.