THE STELLA ARTOIS CHAMPIONSHIPS

June 8, 2005

Andy Murray

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

ANDREW MURRAY: I was listening to the Black-Eyed Peas' "Let's Get It Started" today.

ANDREW MURRAY: Yeah, (smiling).

ANDREW MURRAY: No, it was very tough because I had to keep concentration on my service games the whole way through because he's got one of the biggest serves, I think. And if I had gotten behind in the sets, it's not so easy to break him. So I had to concentrate really hard on my service games the whole way through, and I think I did that quite well. So it looked like the result was maybe a bit easier than what it was.

ANDREW MURRAY: I don't know. I returned very well today; I always return well. But my match tomorrow will be completely different, and then I'll see. Because this guy, Johansson, plays I think much better from the back. He still serves well and he returns better, so tomorrow's going to be a very difficult match. Then I'll judge how I'm playing after tomorrow.

ANDREW MURRAY: Well, it's not so easy to do that. But basically I knew what his strengths were and what his weaknesses were. Obviously, he's got a very good serve and he blocks the returns back quite well. But once you've got him moving -- or when he was approaching the net, he guessed quite a lot, so I just had to concentrate on making my passing shots. And if he guessed right, then that was fine. But if he could do it throughout the whole match, then that would have been too good. But I think I passed very well today and I changed it up well, so I came out on top.

ANDREW MURRAY: I don't understand why people would, like, get nervous playing in front of your home crowd. It's -- basically, I play tennis to play in front of crowds like that, and anybody who doesn't, shouldn't really be playing. Because if you want to be one of the best, you're going to have to play in some big arenas. Here isn't half as big as what it is in some of the places, like in New York. So I just enjoy it when I play in front of those crowds. And especially when they're all with you, it makes it much easier.

ANDREW MURRAY: I'm sure there was before, but not -- maybe when I'm playing in smaller matches and there's not many people there. It's difficult to get fired up, and then you can be losing against players you're expected to beat, and then you can get a bit nervous. But not when I've been playing in front of a crowd.

ANDREW MURRAY: Well, he gives me a lot of confidence because he has a lot of belief in me. We're good friends and we can chat about everything. If he feels something, we can have a good chat about it on the practice court. He's helped me with my serve, and he's sort of got my confidence back and my belief. So he's been a great help to me. I'm looking forward to working with him for the next few weeks.

ANDREW MURRAY: It wasn't so far down. It's just I never played so well on grass before and I had little problems with my coach, my last coach, and he was sort of putting me down a bit towards the end. I just needed somebody to fire me up again and get me ready for these sort of matches. Because if you don't sort of play off the crowd in these matches, it can be pretty tough and you can get down on yourself. But he's helped me with that, so it's been very good so far.

ANDREW MURRAY: No, we didn't really (laughter). Basically, he's a very, very good coach, but he is 70 years old, and for somebody my age to travel with him alone was very difficult off the court and I wasn't so happy. After sort of two or three months, we were arguing every single day and I wasn't enjoying my tennis. But because he's such a good coach, I tried to give it a shot, but it just wasn't working so I had to stop.

ANDREW MURRAY: Yeah, well, if I keep playing like this, there's no way I'm stopping working with Mark. I'm just going to see. Because, obviously, he works for the LTA and does the Sky Sports thing, so that's not going to happen. But I'm not going to rush into making any decisions because this next few months are quite important for me and the next couple of years, so I don't want to have another three or four months like I had this year.