Andy Murray of Britain kicks a tennis ball as he practices at Wimbledon in London.
DPA/London
Andy Murray is taking every advantage he can as he begins the bid for a second Wimbledon title, with the third seed revealing that is calling upon the services of a mental coach to help with his grass-court campaign.
But the 28-year-old stops short of labelling his counsellor as a sport psychologist.
“I don’t use a sports psychologist. It’s a bit different to that,” he told British media in the Wimbledon run-up.
“I’m more interested in learning the signs behind it and why the brain works in certain ways and why you may react or say things at certain times. I just tried to learn and understand myself better.
“As you go along, you learn. I used a lot of sports psychologists when I was younger. Sometimes it helped and sometimes it didn’t feel like it did.”
While has matured into a lean, mean tennis machine, a much scrawnier Murray was lacking both in bulk and confidence at start of his career a decade ago.
He remains a volatile competitor but has backed off from some former habits like hitting himself on the knuckles with his racquet strings after a mistake - which often drew blood.
His mental breakthrough would have come two years ago when he won Wimbledon to break a hoodoo for British men which lasted for more than three-quarters of a century.
“There is someone that I use,” he said of his current set-up. “It’s not a mind guru, it’s a psychiatrist.
“There is a difference—so he tells me—between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. The work I’m doing is different to the work I was doing in the past. I find it extremely interesting.”
Kyrgios claims he’s mates with Federer
Australian Nick Kyrgios has been polishing his image at the approach of Wimbledon, with the hip-hop-styled 20-year-old claiming he’s closer to tennis icon Roger Federer than he is to Rafael Nadal.
While both of the elites will be well-familiar with the Kyrgios game - Nadal lost to him in a Wimbledon fourth round a year ago - it might defy belief that the newcomer is mates with all-time great Federer, nearly a decade and a half his senior.
But Kygrios is never short a controversial line. And after claiming in recent days that tennis is not even his favourite sport, the unpredictable Aussie may have translated a few training sessions with Federer into a perceived friendship while saying he has some distance between himself and Spanish-speaking Nadal.
“Me and Rafa do not really talk too much,” he told Australian media.
“We probably don’t have the greatest relationship, like me and Roger
Federer do. But I’m more than open to having lunch with the guy or something like that”
While he was ticking off names, Kyrgios called Federer a “role model” while putting in a good word for Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, both of whom he apparently gets along with.
Kyrgios will enough on his plate at Wimbledon after dumping his coach and declaring a fortnight ago after a loss at Queen’s club that he was tired of tennis and was hoping to get away from the game in the run-up to Wimbledon.
