You need to love winning, not only hate to lose, Murray says

London: Interviewing tennis players is not totally unlike playing against them. Responding to questions is as much part of their daily routine from an early age as hitting a few hundred topspin backhands.

Andy Murray is a frustrating opponent. His body language, as on court, seems completely at odds with his intent. He is a consistently unsettling mixture of ill-at-ease and supremely confident, affable and truculent, brittle and boyish. He offers the impression of great introspection but he gives next to nothing of that insight away.

Talking about tennis is not his favourite thing, but then it often seems that playing it is not a joyful undertaking either. When we met Murray he was a few days away from publicly splitting from his girlfriend of four years, Kim Sears. We talked a little about their relationship and he did not give a flicker of a hint that things were not all they might have been.

The subsequent reports of the details of the split suggested one of the reasons was Murray's PlayStation habit. Brad Gilbert, his former coach, once said Murray might spend "seven hours a day" on his consoling console.

Pressures

The nugget of insight into the Scot adds to the impression he gives of being wrapped up in his own head. Tennis, with its focus on the individual tests each player's social skills; Murray, it's easy to imagine, internalises such pressures more than most.

"In tennis it is never the coach's fault, it is always just you," he says.

As a younger player it always looked like the fear of losing for Murray was more a motivating force than the joy of victory I wonder if that is still the case for him now?

"You need to love winning," he says, as if he has adopted that as a mantra. "You can't just hate losing. It's too negative." Nevertheless, that need to cope more easily with defeat is one thing that he feels he has learned about his game.

In Federer's case, I suggest, in recent years those defeats have often come against Murray. He immediately produces the statistic: "We have played each other nine times and I've won six."

Whether Murray will make it all the way to No 1 may well be answered in the next year. He's always said he would be playing his best tennis from about the ages of 23 to 26. He's coming into that age at the same time as a number of others, though. Rafa Nadal is 23, Novak Djokovic, who has been Murray's rival for nearly a decade, is 22, Juan Martn Del Potro, the US Open champion, is 21.

"To play at a time when they are around obviously makes things difficult but it also makes your achievements mean more. That's why you put the work in."