What is Andy Murray really like?
It is a question I am frequently asked.
Driven, passionate, emotional, resilient and potty-mouthed are all adjectives regular Murray watchers could turn to.
Mischievous, funny, loyal, polite and indecisive are words I would add, having been lucky enough to develop a professional relationship with him over the past 11 years.
As I travelled home from Wimbledon one autumn afternoon, a message flashed up on the screen in my car.
It was from Murray’s long-time agent Matt Gentry, informing me Andy had just contacted him to say I had cut him up on a slip road on to the A3.
I am still (well, 95%) sure I had not – and was only too aware of his sense of humour – but my pulse still quickened a little when I turned off the A3 and was followed for the next 20 minutes by an expensive-looking car.
I never got a clear look at the driver’s face as he was a lot lower to the ground than I was, but the journey home became more relaxing once the car in question had turned left.
I got off much more lightly than Britain’s Davis Cup winner Dom Inglot, who was dropped in it from a great height by Murray when he suggested, in a live television interview, that Inglot had met a new woman while in Glasgow on national duty. A frantic call home reassured his then partner that Andy was just being Andy.
As an interviewee, Murray has almost always been polite, patient and generous with his time – and very good value. I can count on one hand the number of times he turned me down for an interview, and one of those occasions was after the 2016 Australian Open final against Novak Djokovic. He went straight from the Rod Laver Arena to the airport to catch the last flight of the night, as wife Kim was at home, heavily pregnant with their first child.
Murray is often shivering when I interview him – a recent plunge in the ice bath tends to do that to you. But it shows character to do a (non-mandatory) radio interview after a Grand Slam final or semi-final defeat, of which Murray suffered a few.
As with all marquee names, there was sometimes tension in the air as the post-match media round approached – especially, I remember, at Melbourne Park following one of his frequent semi-final victories. Commitments would be honoured in the early hours of the morning, but everyone was very conscious of the clock ticking down to the Sunday final.
Murray is invariably good copy, as we like to say. He has been steadfast in his criticism of those who break doping rules and in his support for equal pay and female coaches – once describing the level of sexism in sport as “unreal”.
His strong opinions are, though, expressed diplomatically. And on occasions, when time allowed and microphones were off, he was happy to expand on his thoughts in confidence.
There were differences of opinion – and the odd falling-out – with the British tennis media. Following his late withdrawal and subsequent hasty exit from the 2018 Brisbane International, Murray was unhappy about some of what was written in the absence of any formal explanation.
A slightly surreal off-the-record, clear-the-air session followed on speaker phone a week or so later – but only after he had briefed us from his Melbourne hospital bed about the hip operation he had undergone earlier that day.
