It was probably a bad idea when I opened my mouth after a tennis match and said: 'I think we both played like women.' I just didn't realise how bad at the time. This was the start of 2006, my first full season on the tour, and I was excited by the possibility of building on the achievements of the previous year. I was not far off the World Top-60 in the world, the Australian Open was coming up and I was playing a warm-up tournament in Auckland, with a first-round match against Kenneth Carlsen of Denmark.
I'd never experienced a match like it. I haven't since. It was unbelievably windy and we just couldn't hold serve. There were seven, maybe eight, consecutive breaks before I won 7–5 6–2. Immediately afterwards, I was asked if I would do an on-court interview and I didn't think anything of it. 'What was going on with all those breaks of serve?' the interviewer asked me and out it just came: 'Yeah, it was tough, really windy. I think we both played like women in the first set.'
It was one of those comments you just throw out there. The crowd went: 'Ooooohhha-ha-ha', the sound of mock-shock turning into a laugh. I finished the interview and was applauded off the court. It was all fine.
The next thing I know, I am being woken up the next morning with phone calls from radio stations demanding to know if I'm sexist. People were now reporting that I'd been booed off the court when it couldn't have been more the opposite. The crowd had been laughing with me and they certainly clapped me off. There were guys from the British press there who saw and heard the whole thing. They knew what had really happened and yet the reports continued to say that I'd been booed. It was lies, complete lies.
I couldn't believe it. I'm not sexist. I just made a little joke. It wasn't meant to offend anyone. And, anyway, it was a fact. Girls do get their serves broken more than guys. It wasn't saying it was a bad tennis match. I was saying we both had our serves broken a good deal, which happens in women's tennis because they cannot serve as hard as the men.
It wasn't in the same league as Richard Krajicek, the Dutchman who won Wimbledon in 1996 and scandalised women's tennis by saying: 'Eighty per cent of the top hundred women are fat pigs who don't deserve equal pay.' He corrected himself later after an outcry: 'What I meant to say was 75 per cent.'
I was beginning to learn that telling one of my little jokes didn't always have the right effect. For some reason, the world thought it was a big deal. I didn't know what to do. Perhaps I was too young at eighteen to understand what was happening. I couldn't really work it out. I thought what I'd said was quite funny and yet some sections of the media thought that made me a sexist. How can I be a sexist with a mum and a gran like mine?
I suppose I was learning all the time about the way fame works. Everything is fine for the first few months when you burst on to the scene. Then it suddenly twists and people are trying to find an angle on whatever you say. Your opinion starts to matter on things, even if you're a teenager playing tennis matches with no idea of any another agenda. A couple of things can be said and blown out of all proportion. Suddenly, you're portrayed as a really controversial person, just because you tried to have a little bit of fun.
Maybe not surprisingly, I lost in the next round against Mario Ancic and then my coach and I moved on to Australia. I didn't arrive in the best of moods. I was still upset and mystified by the way I'd been treated in Auckland and the next thing to happen was a press conference to discuss the Open draw. Not much could go wrong there, I thought. I hadn't played a match yet. I was wrong again.
In the first round I had drawn Juan Ignacio Chela, the Argentinian ranked eleven places higher than me, but all anyone wanted to talk about was Lleyton Hewitt, the local hero, who I might have to play in the second round.
Hewitt was a fantastic player and former Wimbledon and US Champion, but I couldn't understand why I was being asked about something that clearly might not – and did not – happen. 'So it's Lleyton in the second round?' 'So how do you feel about playing Lleyton in a night match?' everyone seemed to be asking. I felt like saying: 'What are you talking about? Chela is an unbelievably good player. I'm not even expected to win that match and you're all talking to me about Hewitt!' I think I did say something like that. My mood was now even worse.
Then I went out and got killed by Chela. I played really badly and lost 6–1 6–3 6–3. Looking back, I am not at all surprised. I was still worked up about all the sexism business in Auckland. I didn't know if I could trust the press any more and then I felt they had unreasonably expected me to win against a player as good as Chela.
It wasn't their fault I lost the match and if you look back at what I said during my post-match press conference, I didn't say it was their fault. What I did try to express was the difficulty I had with unreasonable expectations. I said: 'If you guys expect me to play well every single match and every single tournament, then it's not going to happen. You guys are expecting me to win matches like this. The guy's ranked nearly twenty places in front of me. He is a much better player than me. It is difficult for me to go out there and try to perform to the best that I can when I'm expected to win all these matches.'
It wasn't a rant. It was a plea for a little understanding. Someone pointed out that I'd had nothing but good press since I had arrived on the circuit. I thought about all the criticisms about my fitness after Wimbledon, all the coaches who had queued up to say I wasn't so good after all and the recent fuss in Auckland, and found I couldn't really agree.
'Well, if you think that, then I'm obviously going to disagree on something,' I said. 'If you guys don't think you're putting pressure on me, then that's fine. I'll forget about it.'
I received some bad press after that, but I think they understood me a little more. I do not look down on other players. I do not get ahead of myself. I've noticed I don't get asked about future opponents any more until I've actually won my matches. With hindsight, it was probably wrong, what I did. I shouldn't have said all that. But it was honest. That is how I was feeling at the time, especially after the injustice of the things that had been written in Auckland.
None of the press ever apologised to me for the lies that were written about that incident. That didn't seem right to me somehow. If I do something wrong I hold my hand up and say: 'Look, I'm sorry. I was wrong to have said it is difficult to play when there is so much expectation on me.'
It was such a shame, in a way. To me, at eighteen, it was hard to discover in Auckland that if you try to be yourself, show a bit of personality and make a little joke, some people will try and make you look like an idiot for it.
That was when I stopped speaking to the press as freely. When I first did press conferences, I used to enjoy them. Later, I felt they could be a trap. There are not many other walks of life where you are expected to sit in a room full of people immediately after some major event in your career, sometimes a miserable one, and answer any question on any subject. Lawyers don't have to do it after a bad loss in court. Journalists don't have to do it when they get sued. Basically, no one is put through the same thing. Even footballers are protected by their managers, and if they do meet the press it is usually just to answer one quick question and then they're free to go. Tennis players do it after every single match. I reckon in any one year, I have to give a hundred press conferences.
I now realise you have to be so prepared. The only thing I can do if I want to make a little joke, is crack that joke about the journalist who is asking the question, which the other journalists might find funny. Then it's all kept between four walls.
Tim Henman led the way. I absolutely understand why he behaved like he did with the press. It was a wise move. It's just so much hassle if you make a flippant comment and it gets blown into a huge story. It's not fair. That might seem a slightly childish thing to say, but if people had to watch their own innocent remark being turned into a global news story, they would might be a little bit more understanding.
It is a bit of a shame that I have to sound more boring than I really am, but if it saves me hassle that's fine. Sport is not a popularity contest and if it means that I can concentrate more easily on playing well, rather than constantly explaining myself, I'll do it. Once a story is written you can't change it. Better not to give them the story in the first place.
I don't want to sound as though I don't realise the media have a job to do. I do get on well with quite a few of the British tennis writers. It just seems to me that some of them take their job to a different level, and that they have no sensitivity as to how it hurts people. It would definitely affect me – if I was going to tear someone to pieces in the course of my work, I would feel horrendous. I wouldn't be able to look them in the eye. I'd never speak to them and I'd go out of my way to avoid them through sheer embarrassment. However, what seems to happen is that they write their piece without any warning and when they see you the next day, they say: 'Hi, how are you?' as though nothing at all has happened. Perhaps I am being naïve, but that doesn't seem right to me.
I suppose this horrible start to the year could have derailed me for quite some time. Instead, something that went way beyond my immediate ambitions caught me by surprise. I think it caught everyone by surprise: my coach Mark Petchey wasn't even there.
Just a couple of days before I was due to go to San Jose for the start of the American hard-court season, Mark said he couldn't come with me to California. So at the last minute I asked my girlfriend, Kim, if she could come instead – and that explains the famous 'kiss' pictures that were splashed all over the newspapers when, still aged eighteen, I won my first ATP title. At least, it was a good story this time.
The tournament was being held at the home of the San Jose Sharks ice-hockey team. I remember it because, just as you walked on to the court, there was a big sign that read: 'Hard Work Beats Talent When Talent Doesn't Work Hard.' It was a lesson I had long-since absorbed and one you can never afford to forget.
I didn't play like the guy who would win the tournament in the first couple of games of my first-round match against the American, Mardy Fish. I went 0–2 down really quickly. I was a little bit uptight because Mark wasn't there. But from then on I started to play really well and winning 6–2 6–2 made me feel so much more relaxed. Now, everything seemed to suit me. I often played late matches well into the night which meant having room service with Kim and a late wake-up call. I am more of a night than a morning person. I felt wonderfully chilled all week.
The exception came in the quarter-final when I played Robin Soderling again, the Swede I had beaten at Wimbledon and later in Bangkok in that landmark match when I finally reached the World Top-100. You couldn't call it a grudge match, but we don't really get on very well and things became argumentative. Both of us received a warning from the umpire and it was a little bit ugly for a while.
I should have lost, that is for sure. I was down 4–6 and then 1–3 and as I was fighting to turn things around we had this massive row about a line call. He hit a ball down the line and the line judge mistakenly called it out. Then the umpire overruled and we had to replay the point. I could see why Soderling was angry because his shot was on the line, but I had been in a really good position to play a passing shot, so I was a little bit annoyed as well.
He went up to the net to argue with the umpire: 'How could she call that ball out!' I walked up to the umpire and complained that it was a tough place to over-rule because it was on the back edge of the baseline. Soderling turned on me: 'What the fuck are you complaining about?' That started the row, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was really fired up and then channelled the adrenaline to mount a comeback. I am sure that's why I went on to win the match. That was a satisfying victory.
In the semi-final, I was playing Andy Roddick, who was ranked third in the world at this stage. By coincidence I had practised with him for the first time in my life the day before the match. I had never seen his famous serve first-hand before. I wasn't terrified because my return is the best part of my game. It took me a little while to get used to it but I learned how to handle it pretty well. The method wasn't complicated: just take the sting out of it and put the ball back in the court.
I wasn't nervous. Why should I be? He was third in the world, I was ranked 50-something. I wasn't expected to win. Five or six games into the match, I felt just like I had against Nalbandian at Wimbledon the year before. 'OK. I know how to win this match,' said a voice in my head. Against Nalbandian my body didn't hold up. This time it did. I won 7–5 7–5 and did not once lose my serve. I think Roddick was shell-shocked. Put it this way, he broke a racket in the locker room after the match.
This was my first win against a top-10 player and now I was playing in my first ATP final, against Hewitt, the opponent-that-never-was in Australia. He wasn't as huge as Roger Federer or Tim Henman in my mind, but I still felt a little strange to be playing him and I started off pretty badly. It wasn't that I thought I didn't deserve to be there, but there was still something of a fantasy about the whole situation. I lost the first set 2–6 in about twenty-five minutes and he must have thought the rest of the match would follow that easily.
I knew what I was doing wrong. I was rushing, which is the worst thing you can do against a player like him because he makes so few mistakes. I was trying to finish the points quickly and moving so fast between them that I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing. I had to put a stop to that. I took a toilet break at the end of the set and forced myself to settle down. It worked better than I could have dreamed. I won the next set 6–1 and nine games later found myself holding a match point on his serve.
We became involved in a rally. The first few shots were fine but so much was riding on the outcome that as the rally extended to seven, eight, nine, ten strokes, I became more and more nervous, my arm felt more and more heavy and, inevitably, he saved the match point. Then he aced me. I thought: 'Oh, God, typical.' He held his serve. It's 5–5.
Then I hold my serve and create another match point during his next service game. Same thing happens. Another ace. That sparks the thought: 'What can I do?' which is not a good one to have at this stage because we are about to enter the tiebreak. I am still nervous but maybe he is too because he makes a big mistake on his forehand which gives me a 4 points to 2 lead. The seventh point tends to be huge in a tie-break, and winning that point gives me a great advantage. Two points later I'm 6 points to 3 up, match point again. Another rally. I hit a backhand down the line, he scurries across, picks it up, but I'm there to crack a backhand cross-court winner that he can't reach. My brain is trying to grasp what is going on here. I am a champion.
Then I didn't really know what to do. This had never happened to me before. I'd just won my first ATP title in a final set tie-break against a guy I used to really love watching when I was growing up, and it was pretty awesome. My coach wasn't there, but my girlfriend was, so I climbed up to the players' box and kissed her. Twice.
That night I couldn't sleep at all, for the adrenaline still streaming round my system. The next day I took Kim shopping and she bought a pair of sunglasses and a bag, which may not seem a huge thing to do as a celebration but we couldn't think of anything else. I didn't buy myself anything. I was happy enough with the result.
But tennis never lets you stay satisfied for long. It would be an understatement to say that the whole American stretch did not go so well after that. It was terrible. From the end of February when I played in Las Vegas to the start of Wimbledon four months later, I won precisely five matches. I lost in so many first rounds that it was almost a waste unpacking my bags. Many were close matches that ran to three sets, but that wasn't much of a consolation.
What was wrong with me? I had no idea. The sad details are that at Indian Wells at the beginning of March I lost to Nikolay Davydenko 1–6 6–3 3–6 in the second round. Two weeks later I'm losing to Stanislas Wawrinka 5–7 6–3 4–6 in the first round at Miami. Maybe I'll have better luck on the clay courts in Europe. Apparently not. I lost to Jean-Rene Lisnard, the local boy, in Monte Carlo 6–4 6–7 5–7. A week later David Ferrer put me out of Barcelona in the second round 6–4 6–7 1–6. In Rome I lost in straight sets to another local boy, Filippo Volandri. At Roland Garros, my first appearance in the main draw of the French Open ended with me losing to Gael Monfils, my old friend from France, in five sets. The pattern was pretty clear. I was making a lot of home crowds very happy by losing to their favourite players, but I was beginning to take it personally.
I had finally split up with Mark Petchey just before Monte Carlo, so I was travelling without a coach, just my physio and sometimes my agent, and I was finding it all a struggle mentally. I desperately wanted to start doing more winning and find again the feeling that I had had in San Jose. I wasn't mentally breaking down but was really depressed and definitely not enjoying life. I talked to my agent and my mum about it. Then Mum started travelling with me again, and when I managed to win a couple of matches at Nottingham the week before Wimbledon, it all seemed to turn around.
Maybe that place has a special effect on me but as I walked on to the Centre Court at Wimbledon for the first time in 2006, I suddenly felt confident again. I don't know the reason. Perhaps it was the support from the crowd who were fantastic. Whatever it was, I played well enough to beat Nicolas Massu of Chile, ranked eleven places higher than me, in straight sets, and if you watch the video you can see how much it meant to me because at the moment of victory I let out a huge roar of relief.
My next match – also on the Centre Court – was against the Frenchman Julien Benneteau. I should have won in straight sets but the onset of darkness seemed to disrupt me. I wanted to finish the match. I was up two sets but I was rushing as I saw the light slipping away. It meant I was playing my opponent and the darkness at the same time, and I ended up throwing away the third set. Then the umpire suspended the match for bad light and I had to spend all night annoyed with myself.
My nerves were bad the following day so that I was almost ridiculously careful. I hardly missed a ball but I was hitting it really softly, just putting it back into court, hoping he would miss. Luckily he did and I was in the third round, but I knew I should have played more aggressively.
And that is when the whole Paraguay thing happened, the next hugely over-blown controversy of 2006. Let me say, here and now, that I am Scottish. I am also British. I am not anti-English. I never was. I'm patriotic and proud to be Scottish, but my girlfriend is English, my gran who I love to bits is English and half her family is English. My fitness trainer's English, my physio's English, some of my best friends are English. I have a flat in London, I supported Tim Henman all through his career, I love watching Ricky Hatton and Amir Khan, two English boxers, I practise in England with English players, I play Davis Cup for Britain – but I love being Scottish. There's nothing wrong with that.
OK. What happened was a little joke – again – that went wrong. It was the time of the 2006 World Cup and England were due to play Paraguay. Tim Henman and I were being interviewed together for a newspaper article on behalf of our sponsors Robinsons, and before we started the journalist asked Tim about England's chances in the World Cup and asked me who I would be supporting. He was making the point that Scotland weren't there. I got the joke. I just laughed.
We did the interview and the last question was: 'Who will you be supporting at the World Cup?' Remembering our previous banter, I just said: 'Whoever England are playing, ha ha.' I had a smile on my face. It was obvious I was joking and just entering into the spirit of our previous conversation.
It wasn't reported like that. The gist of the headlines was that I hated the English. They made up stories about me buying a Paraguay shirt. I never said that. It was a complete lie. The whole thing was absolute nonsense.
I had already dealt with this nationality issue a little at the French Open Junior semi-finals the year before. It was one of the first big press conferences I had ever done and I was being asked about all sorts of things including the fact I was Scottish, not English. It was fine. It made an interesting conversation. Bud Collins, the famous American commentator, asked me – probably for fun – what the difference was.
I said obviously there was a difference because they're two different countries, and I'm from Scotland not England. That's just a fact. I said it was like calling some one from France 'German'. It's just wrong. Is Bud Collins a Canadian? If someone walked up to an English person and asked them if they were Scottish, they would say 'No.' That wouldn't make them anti-Scottish. That's just pointing out where you're from. It isn't my fault that I have to do this from time to time because the majority of the world thinks England is the only country in Britain.
I don't really worry about who won the Battle of Bannockburn, although Robert the Bruce and his boys won it easily I think. Being Scottish is just a fact, not a racist state of mind.
So that is the context of what happened at Wimbledon. One minute everything was fine, the next I'm this Scot who hates the English. I remember walking through the crowd on my way back from practice when I overheard a woman talking on her mobile phone. 'That Scottish wanker's just walked by,' she said and I was quite shocked. That's when I realised how big this thing had become. I purposely hadn't been reading the newspapers and I had been trying not to pay any attention to it, but that was when I realised that some people had taken great offence.
I probably shouldn't have said it. But, again, it was a joke. If anyone understood all the circumstances, they would have realised that. I walked on to court to play Andy Roddick that day in the third round still feeling quite awkward about the whole experience. A few months earlier in Australia I had played dreadfully because of the storm I had caused by accident. This time I was stronger. My game didn't implode.
It was a strange atmosphere to begin with because we had already been watching the beginning of England's quarter-final against Portugal, having beaten Paraguay in the previous round. (So my non-existent Paraguay support hadn't brought them much luck.) Wayne Rooney had been sent off and you could tell that loads of people on Centre Court were half listening to the match on their radios. Even so, Andy and I did our best to distract them because we played a close, intense match where both of us had chances.
I don't remember that much about it, but I know that we were really pumped up and exchanging words across the net. I get on well with him usually and I had practised with him before Wimbledon started, but he was giving me a little bit of shit on court. That's fine. That's what happens in sport. It is the same as football, the guys are trying to wind the other guys up, as Portugal's Ronaldo had just proved in his confrontation with Rooney that ended with Wayne getting a red card. Players try and disrupt their opponent's game plan and that is all Andy was doing.
I managed to win in straight sets 7–6 6–4 6–4. It was a huge win for me and one of the first questions Gary Richardson, the BBC journalist, asked me in his interview after the match was: 'You probably know that England have just lost, what do you think of that?' I said something like: 'Look, it's a shame. It would have been great for British sport if England had won the World Cup.'
After a match like that the last thing I wanted to do was discuss why I'd made a joke out of something and it had been – I keep saying this – blown out of all proportion, but I knew I had to do something. In the end, I just wanted to clear it up by saying the right thing and getting it over with. I don't know whether my tactful answer made any difference to what people thought about me. I just remember being quite annoyed about the whole fuss.
I had never won through to the second week of a grand slam before, and at this point I didn't know what to do. I was nineteen years old, I didn't have a coach and I couldn't decide when or how to practise on the Sunday off. As a result, I felt a little bit flat when I played my old rival from junior days, Marcos Baghdatis, on a sweltering Centre Court and lost in straight sets.
Maybe it was a good thing. I had played so well against Roddick, but you could play seven matches over fourteen days at a grand slam and I needed to learn how to pace myself. You don't want to be too distant and relaxed. You don't want to be over-anxious and impatient either. I don't think I had the balance quite right yet.
Jimmy Connors said afterwards that I needed to do a 'gut check', not just with tennis but with my attitude, so that I was able to 'embrace the pressure'. That is, more or less, what I said too. I needed to get stronger, physically and mentally, and my game needed to improve, but I wasn't down-hearted. I still thought that by twenty-one or twenty-two, I could be playing my best tennis at grand slams.
Clearly, I needed a coach again, and not long afterwards a deal was done that allowed me to work with Brad Gilbert, the former top-10 player who had coached Andre Agassi and Roddick and was reckoned to be one of the best in the world. The Lawn Tennis Association had hired him to work with a number of the British players, but it was accepted that he would be travelling a fair amount of the time with me. The papers debated whether he was worth the money, a reputed £750,000, but that was nothing to do with me. I was just glad, having been coachless since the spring, to have someone so knowledgeable in my corner. It seemed to work OK – within about a month I had beaten Roger Federer.
Directly after Wimbledon I made the so-called 'glamour trip' to Newport again and this time made the semi-finals. I did moan about the courts, but not in my press conference. I was learning. From there I had to come back for the Davis Cup against Israel at Eastbourne, which was where I discovered I would be linking up with Brad. We started working together in Washington DC, where I immediately made the final and then moved on to Toronto where I reached the semi-finals, having beaten Tim Henman again in the second round.
Strangely, a week later in Cincinnati, I played Tim yet again. The match went to three sets but produced the same result. I won. That was three times in a row now in less than a year and my reward was to play Federer, the runaway number one in the world who had just won his fourth Wimbledon in a row. Maybe that wasn't much of a reward after all.
I went into the contest well aware that there was no pressure on me. No one expected me to win, not against a man who was on a 55-match winning streak and who had only been beaten by one guy, Rafa Nadal, all year. The chances of him losing to a 19-year-old kid ranked 21 in the world, who had never been beyond the fourth round of a grand slam had to look pretty slim.
We both began pretty badly, trading breaks of serve. My first service percentage was disgusting, somewhere around 33. I was feeling strangely tired because I was so uptight inside. I was seriously worked up about playing him and it seemed to be draining the energy out of me. Despite that and my inefficient serving, Federer didn't seem his usual dominant self either. It was I who reached set point in the first set and, perhaps to some surprise, I sealed it with an ace.
The second set produced a slightly higher standard of tennis, but I was suffering from the same physical problem. I was so tired I couldn't feel my legs. They seemed so dead and so heavy. I think part of the problem was the fact that I had been failing to serve out my last few matches. I would be in a really dominant position and then allow my opponent back into the match. It happened against David Ferrer when I was leading 6–2 5–0 in Toronto – the final score was 6–2 7–6. It happened again when I was leading 6–2 5–3 against Tim. That kind of thing preys on your mind. You can't stop thinking about it and it affects your game with doubt.
Against Federer, I refused to let myself think like that. Instead I was thinking: 'Just forget about it. You can do this You can do this.' I wasn't panicking like I was in the other matches. I held it all together and on my second match point, Federer came into the net and I hit a backhand pass down the line to beat him. The relief was astounding. I just slumped back in my courtside chair and put a towel over my head in a daze. It felt as if I'd won the whole tournament, not just a match in round two.
It gives you such a shot of belief, a result like that. It told me that one day I could win a grand slam. There was now a voice in my head saying: OK, you've now got a good chance of being one of the best players in the world. Beating Federer was always something I had wanted to do, but until you actually win against a guy like him, it's tough to imagine it happening.
I didn't see much of him immediately afterwards. He left there pretty quickly. It can't have been very enjoyable for him. He doesn't normally get into a bad mood on court, but during the match he received a warning for hitting a ball over a fence. Maybe he was tired. At the end of the match, he just shook my hand and said something like 'Good job'. Nothing too deep, but it sounded pretty good to me.