After a little tension during Andy Murray's coaching change, Barcelona is once again claiming him as one of its own.

From The Independent: Barcelona shares in Murray's glory

Back in April a Barcelona sports daily ran a whole page on Andy Murray under the headline El futuro del tenis Britanico, and they were spot-on. The pre-diction was made with a leavening of pride, since the Scottish teenager was the closest thing to a home-grown youngster, someone who had learned the key elements of his game at the academy run by the former Spanish Davis Cup players Emilio Sanchez and Sergio Casal just outside Barcelona...

Asked if he would have got where he is today, 70th in the world rankings, had he not buckled down under the Sanchez-Casal regime, Murray simply says: "No."

So it seemed worth checking out just how this school of excellence, just off the Barcelona ring road and a couple of miles from the airport, turns promising raw material into potential millionaires.

In seven years Sanchez and Casal have transformed a former shabby private club into Europe's best-known tennis place of learning...

On the top floor of the converted listed farmhouse which houses the administrative section, Sanchez bounds from his office in beaming greeting, happy not only because of the Murray marvels but also because of his own recent appointment as Spain's Davis Cup captain. You might think the 40-year-old Sanchez would be delighted to accept the credit offered him by Murray, but no. He immediately stresses: "What we have done here is not so important. Players like Andy and Rafael Nadal are talented ones, they will make it anyway, doesn't matter where they are."

The foundation of the sort of genius possessed by Murray lies in what Sanchez calls "privileged hands". He explains: "Andy is a natural in the way that Roger Federer is a natural. In tennis, shots are made with the arm, but the hand at the end is what gives you options to do things with the ball. With a privileged hand you have many more options because your opponent isn't sure what you are going to do."

For the first 12 months of his two-and-a-half-year residence, Murray was combining his Spanish training with coaching back home in Scotland which, according to Sanchez, merely confused him and hindered his progress. "He was working one way here and another way in Scotland," Sanchez says. "But when he concentrated only with us, he started to do much better, though he was still very young...

"We did three important things with Andy. First, we made him work a lot on his positional sense. Second, we made him very disciplined, because here you have to do not only tennis but also studies. And third, we made sure he always played against someone better than him, to give him a good level of practice and competition. What is the point of beating lower-class players?"

As someone who won 15 singles titles on the men's tour and represented Spain for a dozen years in the Davis Cup, Sanchez stresses that constant clay-court practice has been a foundation for Murray's success. "On clay you are always going to hit 100 balls in succession in the same place. That's why those who play only on hard courts or grass, where the ball stays lower, don't have consistency in their groundstrokes. It is a basic requirement for today's tennis to have that consistency."...

"Kids need good models. World number ones like Marat Safin and Lleyton Hewitt played tennis which was not good to copy, a very personal tennis. Federer, who plays almost perfect tennis and can do anything, is going to be very good for the kids, and so can Andy when he develops more. But he has to improve a lot still, the volleys, the serve and the positioning...

Such achievements, Sanchez noted with a smile, often necessitate a change of plan. "Andy's people called to say he would be coming back here in October, but then his calendar changed. Now he has to understand his needs and priorities. But he wanted to come back here, not to practise, but because all his friends are here, the ones he lived with. I think he wants to come here and be a normal kid. This is the right place to do that."

And if Andy Murray finds the time for such a break, says Sanchez, he would be made very welcome. "We would never close the door on someone who is such a part of us."

Comments

This is a fascinating article about Murray, and to an extent explains the hype surrounding him. While the press and the british fans are naturally attracted to a british player with a decent chance of being top 20, to replace the fading Henman, it is actually the tennis insiders who are most excited by Murray and have been for some time.

The surprising thing about this year is not how well he has done since Queens but how poorly he played in the first half of the season.

At the Sanchez-Casal training camp Andy has long been expected to go right to the top. Whether this is wishful thinking for one of their own, or a perfectly reasonable assessment of his talents, is as yet unclear.