Source: Telegraph
Wimbledon 2009: Andy Murray knows he is ready to win his first Wimbledon title
He has been talking non-stop for nearly three hours, has been asked the same question about his Wimbledon chances every other 30 seconds and has still somehow managed to avoid butting anyone.
He is asked a daft one and offers no smart alec riposte, just a polite dead bat. He's no laugh-a-minute, but neither is he the supposed monotone misery of legend. He comes over as a charming, unfailing model of patience while having to ponce around a mite self-consciously in his Fred Perry retro kit.
Related ArticlesBecker: Murray can make historyLosing Nadal proves bittersweetMurray 'where he belongs' says FedererLooking good again for FedererVenus has great sense of historyWimbledon's top 10 gruntersSurrounded by interrogators, he stretches out his legs lazily and it dawns just what an impressive specimen he is now, at 6ft 3in and just over 13st. You see Murray on TV and somehow imagine him to be still a bit lanky; yet the quads are huge and the calves bulge. The musculature is striking, the sheen telling of an athlete in his prime.
You pinch yourself. Is it really four years since he first rolled up at Wimbledon, all gauche and gawky like some cross between Kevin the Teenager and John Gordon Sinclair's Gregory?
Remember the rare old drama queen, who would conduct a self-flagellating dialogue with himself at full volume? The one whose cramping Bambi legs, protected by clunky ankle supports, couldn't seem to carry the weight of his obvious talent? The cocky, novice world No 312, who could outclass the world No 13 Radek Stepanek and then do himself no favours by describing his opponent's behaviour as "stupid"?
Murray doesn't raise a smile when he thinks back about his 18-year-old self, being painted as surly and brash. It was just an image, though; the lad was always OK. Yet critics always did seem to take rather too much glee in his growing pains on court.
Did the man who now believes he is ready, both physically and mentally, to become the first Briton since the blessed Fred himself to win the event still remember the old criticism?
"It was different back then," he reflects. "Today, if someone said I was skinny or whatever, it wouldn't bother me, but then it did. I felt I had to answer questions about how I had a lot of growing to do and how I'd break down under injury."
Murray's body now answers for him. He laughs that he always did wear T-shirts "XL size" but that these days they aren't baggy on him any more. As for the guy who gave us that comical muscleman biceps flex after his win over Richard Gasquet last year, he's a veritable weakling next to the version who has since filled out by five kilos after energy-packed diets and murderous fitness regimes.
Resilience may be Murray's true strength. The blessed talent we take as read, but it's the fact that he is never cowed by a setback, only motivated, which has brought him to the point where anything but a grand slam win now will feel anti-climactic for him.
Roger Federer beating him in the US Open final, he now recognises, was "pivotal". He never sulked, only vowing to reach new levels of fitness during the winter under the pitiless eye of his physical conditioner Jez Green. Intensive training twice a day, six days a week; the 24 chin ups followed by another 24 and another; 10 killer 400-metre repetitions at 75 second intervals. Hellish.
Extra fitness translates into more breathtaking shotmaking. Last week, beating James Blake in the Queen's final, he sped, checked and stretched to play a sidespin drop shot, which proved so incredible, the ball turning square as it plopped on the line, that Murray could hardly appreciate its brilliance. "Lucky," he called it.
But luck doesn't enter into it. "In the last few months, I have hit a lot more great shots than I used to and I think a lot of it is just down to being stronger. I've got more confidence to go for my shots and my balance and strength at full stretch is so much better that I can pull them off."
Murray recalls that when his fitness travails proved so demanding on one occasion, he just felt sorry for himself and gave up. Then a vision dragged him back out to do it all over again; it was him serving for this year's Wimbledon title against Rafa Nadal.
Well, he got that one way wrong. Nadal no longer features in his dreams; Murray has Queen's in his pocket, a clear run to the final and the knowledge that Federer has him worming around in his head. He knows champions generally win Wimbledon before their 23rd birthday. He knows he is ready.
"I just wasn't last year," he reflects. "But I feel now I am, physically and mentally. I think my game's there; now it's just a matter of putting it altogether."
Forget the boy; just look at and listen to the man. Murray has been built for this moment.
MURRAY'S POSSIBLE PATH TO THE TITLE...
FIRST ROUND Robert Kendrick (US)SECOND ROUND Ernests Gulbis (Latvia)THIRD ROUND Viktor Troicki (Serbia) 30FOURTH ROUND Marat Safin (Russia) 14QUARTER-FINAL Gilles Simon (France) 8SEMI-FINAL Andy Roddick (US) 6FINAL Roger Federer (Switzerland) 2
