Andy Murray’s love of boxing is well documented and a little misleading. He is no frustrated pugilist (marooned as he is between light-heavyweight and cruiser), but watching men – or women – fight is not an easy experience for him, although he admits he is hooked on it. It is a familiar paradox.
As Murray readies himself for Wimbledon and Novak Djokovic, he might allow himself time in front of the television at home in Oxshott on Saturday to see if his fellow London Olympian Anthony Joshua can repel the challenge of the unbeaten American Dominic Breazeale to retain his world heavyweight title at the O2 Arena, which has become the Watford fighter’s Wimbledon.
“He should win, shouldn’t he?” Murray asks rhetorically. He should, Andy. There follows an engaging discussion about the parallels and the differences between the sports, as Murray reveals how he can go toe to toe on the tennis court, but prefers to dance. “I get unbelievably nervous watching boxing,” he says, “the shakes almost. It’s difficult to explain. It’s that balance. Most people who watch boxing like to see knockouts, but at the same time I don’t want to see someone get hurt. It’s a bit of dilemma.”
In a couple of sentences, the tennis player talks to the boxer. They share much, yet are worlds apart. “I can’t watch it if it’s someone I know. When I was younger I could watch stuff online, like people breaking legs. Now I can’t watch that stuff anymore. When I watch a big fight, I get a big adrenaline rush, very nervous. I appreciate them as athletes. I appreciate the skill and the bravery, everything they show to do it. It’s an incredibly tough sport.
“There are similarities with tennis: taking time away from your opponent, neutralising their strengths, finding their weaknesses. When someone watches a tennis match they say stuff like, ‘Why doesn’t he just play to his forehand?’ But when you get out there on the court, it’s not that easy. The same with boxing.
“There are things I won’t see that boxers would see – like Floyd Mayweather, for instance. You might think he’s easy to back up and get him on the ropes. But, if it was that simple, everyone would do it. It’s the same with tennis. The best players make it look simple, but it’s incredibly difficult.
“There are times in points and times in matches where you want your opponent to make mistakes, you aren’t trying to hit winners, but you’re trying to put the ball in awkward and difficult positions. Then there are times when you have to go in there and assert yourself, try and finish points. There are definitely similarities between the two sports.”
Occasionally in boxing, two fighters will “go at it”, forgetting the niceties. It happens in tennis, too, but Murray is not a knockout artist. He would rather be Mayweather. “It doesn’t happen too often to me, but it does happen,” he says. “It’s not the best way to play. But some players spend their whole careers that way, hitting every ball as hard as they can, not really thinking. It’s a bit like a slugger in boxing. That’s their strength and that’s what they do well. They stick to it, even though they have the technical abilities to do something else. I try to avoid doing that as much as I can, but it does happen.”
There have been moments – such as in an unforgettable quarter-final against Djokovic at the US Open in 2014 when, for a period in the second set, Murray hit the ball as hard and as flat as any of us courtside could remember. He thrashed it at sharp angles from the right side of mid-court with such precision and power that the Serb could not put a racket on most of them. It was exhilarating, like watching a fighter going for a knockout. But Djokovic soaked it up to win on points.
“The thing with that is,” Murray says, “it’s great when you’re hitting it clean, hitting it well. But when you’re hitting it hard and flat you’re giving yourself such a small margin over the net. Someone like Rafa [Nadal], one of his strengths is that he hits the ball so hard, with so much top-spin, he almost takes the net completely out of play.
“If you start to miss a couple when you hit the ball [flat and hard], the errors can pile up quite quickly. It’s a tactic that works if you can execute it, but it’s not that easy, not that high percentage, because of the lack of spin. If you can execute it for long enough, it works.”
There is, he says, “stuff coming back” as well, just as in boxing. An attacker has to maintain his own poise and balance in defence. “Tennis players play so many matches, their IQ is high when it comes to tactical stuff,” he says. “If you’re hitting the ball from the same place all the time and you’re hurting them, they start to hit the ball to a different position on the court. You can’t just keep doing the same things. If I’m just hitting crosscourt forehand, crosscourt forehand and it’s working [as he was against Djokovic in New York] they are going to change the direction of the ball to my backhand. Then it totally changes the way the point is played.”
Murray employs the mind games on court. He gets such a buzz from the challenge of pitting his intelligence against Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer that lesser contests sometimes drain him of his focus and, in a twinkling, he can be flirting with defeat by someone he should be beating in straight sets.
At Roland Garros last month, he was dragged through 10 stressful sets against the 37-year-old Radek Stepanek, the crafty old Czech bruiser, then the 22-year-old French ingenu Mathias Bourgue – both of them ranked outside the top 100. It was not until the booming serves of Ivo Karlovic and John Isner concentrated his mind – each lasting three quick sets – that he found a pleasing rhythm against the artful Richard Gasquet and the muscular defending champion, Stan Wawrinka. They brought out the best in him en route to the final, but he could not hurt Djokovic for long enough.
“I do enjoy the challenge,” Murray says. “Against certain players you can get away with not playing well. In matches like that, however, [against the best] weaknesses get exploited, but they are also good matches to learn from because those guys can play very good tennis, defensively and offensively.
If they are just wanting to rally and stay neutral, they can do that as well. “Novak has improved his volleying, but Roger and Rafa are also two of the best volleyers. Novak returns exceptionally well. In those matches, everyone does everything well. It’s not like there’s loads of weaknesses to exploit. It takes time to work things out and also to find a weakness. If there’s something they’re struggling with they might not show it. If it’s 1-all in the first set, you might easily get to five-all, six-all when the stress and the nerves and the pressure start to build a little bit.”
They call the rounds 10, 11 and 12 of a world title fight the championship rounds. That is when fighters discover if they have what it takes to win the title. In tennis, those moments arrive in the final of a slam, after six five-setters over a fortnight that either build or break a player’s confidence.
Murray has in his corner a second who could not look more like a boxing trainer, Ivan Lendl. He will sit with inscrutable menace in his box on Centre Court and, when Murray glances up at him occasionally for inspiration, he will get a subliminal message that he is good enough to go into the championship rounds, where the real fighting takes place.
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