• Tennis

'Murray needs to love the game again'

ESPN staff
May 27, 2014
Andy Murray must rediscover his appreciation for tennis, says his former coach Mark Petchey © Getty Images
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Mark Petchey believes whoever Andy Murray names as his next coach will need to make the Scot fall in love with the game again if they are to take him on to the next level.

The Wimbledon champion said he already knows who will succeed Ivan Lendl, who Murray split with in March, and would reveal all after the French Open.

Petchey, who coached Murray into the world's top 50 before they parted ways in April 2006, believes the 27-year-old needs a figure to help rediscover his passion for the sport more than anything else.

"What Andy wants is the maximum he can get out of himself and that's not going to change," Petchey told the Times. "Any less than that will disappoint him a lot more than it might disappoint anyone else.

"His standards have always been his own and what he wants to attain, that's the burning question that none of us have the understanding of being in his situation. Once you have won Wimbledon, how do you reset to go on?

"Andy needs somebody to make him appreciate why he plays this game, because what he has achieved already is enough.

"Think of these greats who have won six-plus slams, amazing to have that ability year after year to do the same thing as well as they've done it before. Look at Roger [Federer] and the unadulterated joy as if he's coming on to the tour for the first time. He is phenomenal. How Roger comes to these tournaments and keeps it as it was at the start is a gift. It has never faded."

Since his split from Lendl, who guided him to his grand slam breakthrough at the US Open and then Wimbledon, Murray has been linked with a move to make John McEnroe his new coach.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd
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