Andy Murray confines high living to his world ranking

As far as the eye could see - and from Andy Murray's vantage point on the 25th floor the vista was pretty stunning - the sky was a radiant shade of blue. One sentence from him summed it up. “I've got a good thing going,” he said. And so he has.
The eleventh title of his career - as many as Tim Henman collected and he did not get off the mark in ATP World Tour terms until he was 22, an age that Murray reaches next month - sparked yet more intrigue and debate about how far the Scot can go in a sport grateful that he chose to excel at it.
In this purple period for men's tennis, where heroic matches and high achievement are commonplace, Murray is excelling to the extent that his 6-2, 7-5 victory over Novak Djokovic in the Sony Ericsson Open final on Sunday was his 57th success in 64 singles matches since Wimbledon 2008. No one, not even Rafael Nadal, the world No1, can beat that across the same time frame.
When Murray said at the breakfast table yesterday that he was feeling a bit rough, it was nothing to do with partying the night away, for he lives a famously abstemious lifestyle. After 12 high-intensity matches (plus three doubles) in 26 days, reaching successive Masters finals and landing the crown here, it was natural for the body to take some picking up. There was no alcoholic intake - he has not had a drink for four years.
I just hate the taste of the stuff. I did have a sip of my girlfriend Kim's strawberry cocktail last night but it was horrible,” he said. He recalls his days at the Barcelona training camp as a teenager where, after five days of solid toil, he would have a bit of a shakedown at the weekend.
“Then I'd feel terrible on the Monday and into the Tuesday and that was a complete waste. I didn't enjoy going out, the music was too loud, you couldn't hear yourself speak and you'd wake up with a terrible sore throat.”
He is not a puritan, far from it, but the enormous amount of dedication to making himself the best player that he can be is shown in his present form and how much he is hopeful that it can be maintained and improved upon. At another time, he says, all of the present top three - Murray is No 4 but closing fast on Djokovic - would have accumulated enough ranking points to be the No 1 player. How about himself? “I don't know, but I suppose I wouldn't be far off,” he said.
The clay-court season is advancing and he flies to Monte Carlo on Friday to prepare for an unremitting seven weeks of tournament play and heavy-duty practice. There is much to work on, much to take in, much to achieve. Keeping one step ahead tactically is everyone's aim.
“It is about understanding how to use my game best,” he said. “My serve is improving, I'm more comfortable with many things but I still think I need to move forward more. It's getting to the stage where everyone is so good from the baseline that it is essential to be able to end the points more quickly. That needs to become a bigger part of my game.”
Source:the times