1st September 2007
With his body in good shape once more, Murray has been concentrating on his mental strength. With Roberto Forzoni, his sports psychologist, here to observe and advise him, Murray has been preparing for his matches by watching old tapes of Muhammad Ali in his pomp. A great follower of boxing, the Scot is trying to absorb the attitudes and approach of Ali and other greats of various sports. Not only is it working, but he thinks Forzoni’s work here is almost done.
“I watched some videos of Muhammad Ali and Lance Armstrong and some other sports people,” Murray said. “I watched bits and pieces of them last night. I also watched little bits of videos from my matches here from last year. I watched a bit of my match against [Fernando] Gonzalez [Murray won in five sets].
“I spoke to Roberto, too, after my first match and everything was good. The things that we’d spoken about before were fine, so there wasn’t really anything to chat about. We didn’t need to do anything more.”