“When I bring the club up I feel like I get to the top too quickly,” said Andy Murray in a serious conversation with Bob MacIntyre, his fellow countryman, on the ninth tee at Wentworth.
It was strange to see Murray asking for tips when he has been the boss in his sporting domain for so many years.
But you can imagine how the Wentworth Pro-Am would fill anyone with anxiety. All those spectators, standing perilously close to your ball. All those social media channels, ready to broadcast embarrassing footage of your failed drive around the world. Yet it was Murray’s shirt that first caught the attention, as he forgot one of the game’s most cherished rules: tucking in your shirt.
“I was pretty nervous,” Murray said after coming off the track. “I couldn’t really feel my arms and legs.”
Asked if it was worse than walking onto Flushing Meadows to play in the US Open final, he replied: “It’s a different kind of nervousness. I don’t think I’m going to walk onto a tennis court and forget how to hit the ball. Whereas here you’re a little nervous about it – there’s people standing five metres away from where I’m driving, and I’m thinking, I’m useless at this match.”
I can confirm that Murray did indeed top a drive like a hacker with a valid passport, yelling “Noooo!” as the ball spun 50 yards into a gorse bush. Otherwise you’d be disappointed, right? It’s no fun when a sporting legend moves to another arena and then masters it without the slightest bit of effort.
That’s not to say Murray didn’t hit a stonker or two, too. Within the first five holes – played in a Texas scramble format alongside fellow amateurs James Anderson and Anton Du Beke – he’d already made some excellent up-and-downs off greenside bunkers, and he marked each hole with a celebratory fist-pump.
The intensity of the reaction was not feigned. Here was a man who was killing time between tennis matches by throwing crumpled-up paper into the bin, in a do-or-die duel with Tim Henman. In Murray’s world, every day is a match day.
“I still enjoy competing,” Murray said afterward when asked about the fist pumps. “Of course, it’s never going to replace what you had on the tennis court, but this is fun. You hit enough bad shots in golf, you have to give yourself a pat on the back when you hit a few good ones.”
The format for this pro-am event was too complicated to explain here, except to say that Murray, Anderson, Du Beke and MacIntyre began their round on the 18th hole as part of a shotgun start. Billed as the second group behind the Rory McIlroy/Gareth Bale party, they eventually finished 16th of the 20 runners. It turned out that Du Beke, despite a one handicap, does not swing as smoothly as he twirls.
Murray currently plays with seven players and has already said that his next competitive goal is to become a scratch golfer. While he expects the project to take a few years, MacIntyre laughed at the suggestion, saying: “He’ll be on scratch in no time.” Murray also acknowledged that it would be nice to be better than Henman, who plays most days and has a handicap of plus two.
“He was good for a guy who obviously hasn’t played that much golf,” MacIntyre said. “He did say he practiced a lot [two-and-a-half to three hours per weekday, in fact] in the build-up to this. He changed his clubs yesterday, a full set. I was very impressed with his play.”
Murray was accompanied by his father Willie, who carried his bag. He joked afterwards that “My dad might get fired after his performance today. He spent most of his time with Bob. But no, it was great. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with my dad during my tennis career. So that was a really cool day too.”
By the last few holes, Murray had reverted to the limp we remember from his tennis decadence. Still, he hit his last two shots in the 17th. He already looks considerably lighter than when he played, and he confirmed afterward that he has lost 12 pounds in the seven weeks since his retirement.
“I went to the gym for three of the first four days after I quit, worked really hard and then went to Scotland for a couple of days for a holiday,” Murray said. “I haven’t been back since. It’s been five weeks since I’ve been out of the gym, probably the longest I’ve ever been.
“With my weight I don’t know if it’s appetite? Or if I’m not eating that much? Of course we have a lot of sports drinks [in tennis]that are high in calories, and I now only drink water and coffee. I expected the opposite to happen.
“I said to my wife, ‘Look, I’m going to make sure I stay in good shape when I retire.’ And she said, ‘Oh, if you just go play golf and do what Ivan did, [a reference to Murray’s former coach Ivan Lendl, who is twice the man he used to be]I don’t want that.”
Murray’s Golf Game Dissected
Driving/forest
Murray’s tee shots showed a slight tendency to leak to the right, but overall – with the exception of that topped drive on the seventh hole – they held up well. “I hit one really bad drive,” he said, “but yeah, overall it was solid, better than I expected.” Distance-wise, MacIntyre estimated he’d hit the ball 250 or 260 yards.
Irons
Very solid. There were no real shocks in that area and there were plenty of cleanly struck approaches. Murray’s swing may look a little stiff in places – the legacy, one might assume, of all those hip and back surgeries – but he has an easy rhythm that comes from an early start in the game. As he explained after the round, he and brother Jamie “would go out with our parents or grandparents and start on the second tee and play four or five holes in the summer after tennis practice or after school.”
wedges
His least favorite part of the game. Murray’s worst shot was undoubtedly an 85-yard approach shot on the eighth hole that he threw into the water guarding the green. “Those shots from 50 to 80 yards were hard for me,” he explained. “We talked about it leading up to the match and both Jimmy and I [Anderson] were like, ‘I hate these strokes.’ And then we both hit him right in the water, really hard.”
To stake
Strong performance here. “I haven’t lost that,” said Murray, who was very efficient over the five- or six-foot range that can make all the difference on a scorecard. He may have been hesitant at times, missing a few balls, but he read the greens well. As a tennis player, he always embodied that sporting cliché of “big man’s touch,” and the same is true now of his short game.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 3 months with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
