It’s a fact that has only grown less explicable with time: Andy Murray went 10 years before he reached his first clay-court final, and won his first clay-court title.
Yes, the Scot is from a land best-known for grass courts, but he trained extensively on clay, at the Sanchez-Casals Academy in Barcelona, as a teenager. And it shows in his game. Like any good dirt-baller, his strong points include consistency, speed, shot tolerance, defense, and passing shots. Yet Murray, who turned pro in 2005, only reached his first clay final at the BMW Open in Munich in April 2015. During his first decade on tour, all 48 of his finals, and all 30 of his titles, came on other surfaces.
What’s the most likely explanation for this surprising lack of success? First, Murray has typically only played on clay when necessary, in the lead-up to Roland Garros. Second, he has played in an era dominated by the best dirt-baller ever, Rafael Nadal. Murray lost his first six meetings with Rafa on clay—all in the latter rounds of Grand Slams and Masters events—before finally beating him in the Madrid final in 2015, one week after his Munich breakthrough. Third, the clay season comes just before Wimbledon, which has always been the most important event on the calendar for Murray. However much he wanted to win on clay, winning on grass meant more. However disappointed he was over a defeat in Paris, he knew London would soon be calling.
According to Murray, though, the main problem was physical. The surface was a strain on his body, and it only got worse, and more painful, as time went on.
“The last few years on the clay I would say [were] pretty bad,” Murray said in Madrid in 2015. “I didn’t enjoy playing really on this surface. I was just hurting really a lot of the times when I was training or preparing for this part of the season.”
But after recovering from back surgery, Murray felt better in 2015, and that spring he credited his coach at the time, Amelie Mauresmo, and his trainers, for making some “drastic” changes to his workout regimen.
There were two other events of note in Murray’s life in the days and weeks leading up to his first clay title. The first was his wedding, to Kim Sears, that April. In the past, marriage had been blamed for the demises of male champions like Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, but Murray saw the upside: “If you’re happy away from the court, and your private and personal life is good, that will help everything,” he said. Things would stay good for Murray for the next 18 months, a period when he reached his first French Open final, won his second Wimbledon, led Great Britain to its first Davis Cup title in 79 years (on clay), and finished as the year-end No. 1 for the first and only time.