If Andy Murray is game for a laugh Jonas Bjorkman will keep him smiling

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/mar/12/andy-murray-jonas-bjorkman

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Andy Murray would seem to have chosen a coaching aide of comforting normality in the 42-year-old Jonas Bjorkman, and he will be glad to learn they share at least one embarrassing gaffe.

As a fledgling editor of a tennis magazine after he had retired in 2008, Bjorkman interviewed the American player James Blake, who had recently been voted one of the sexiest men in the game.

“I couldn’t hold back and not ask about his charm with the girls,” Bjorkman recalled in an interview with the ATP website. “Unfortunately in the story we referenced his girlfriend and ran a picture of his ex-girlfriend. I showed him the spread [later]. He joked that he’ll never do an interview with me again, but he took it OK.”

Murray knows the feeling. After Great Britain had beaten the United States in their Davis Cup tie in Glasgow on Sunday, he mentioned in a live television interview that Dominic Inglot had met “a little girlfriend” over the weekend – oblivious to the fact his team-mate had recently started a relationship.

That should be an ice-breaker, then, when Murray and Bjorkman meet later this month to discuss the Swede joining the team to help out during those weeks when Amélie Mauresmo is away.

However, it is unlikely Bjorkman will stray far from his home in Monaco, where he has lived for several years with his wife, Petra, and two young children. When he quit the Tour, he admitted: “The travelling is the [one thing] that’s been the toughest in the end.”

Bjorkman is remembered kindly as a generous and funny companion on tour, and was renowned as a locker-room joker and impressionist who enjoyed a good time away from the court. So he should get on well with Murray, whose sense of humour swings between the cruel and the crazy.

Although he is teetotal, Murray will appreciate the story of when Bjorkman famously played a Davis Cup dead rubber with a hangover.

In Argentina in 2006, the local crowd gave the visitors a torrid time and the Swedes, 3-0 down going into the final Sunday, were not keen to play on in such a hostile atmosphere. In an interview with Cafe magazine, Bjorkman revealed: “The crowd, egged on by [Diego] Maradona, were terrible. It was a scandal.”

Rebellious and angry, the Swedish players, captained by Mats Wilander, indulged in several rounds of drinks on the Saturday night, determined to pull out and return home, but they were told they had to go through with the rest of the tie.

“You’ve had a few beers the evening before and not all [of the alcohol] was gone,” Bjorkman later told the Swedish paper Expressen of how he felt on Sunday morning – although he was not, apparently, “totally out of it”.

Never the less, he lost the final match 6-0, 6-1 to José Acasuso.

Acasuso could be proud of that scalp, however diminished its legitimacy, because Bjorkman was playing some of his best singles in his mid-thirties, making the semi-finals at Wimbledon in 2006 and 2007, as well as the fourth round at Roland Garros. But doubles, where he won nine majors and was No1 in the world, was his strength. That is the expertise he will bring to the Murray project, with touch, balance and judgment at the net.

Bjorkman has stayed in touch with tennis, mainly at the grassroots, where he coaches through his clinic in Stockholm. Now he is catapulted back on to the Tour, and it will be fascinating to see how he gels with Murray and Mauresmo. Word is they have already hit it off well.

Bjorkman said after his last match, at the Masters Cup in Shanghai in 2008: “It started as my hobby, and I’ve been able to do it for 17 years, which is great. To listen to all the trash talk in the locker rooms will be something that I will miss.”

Even back then, Bjorkman rated Murray, describing him as “the new prince” chasing Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, “four guys competing on … a different level to the rest of the group. The way they play, it is different, with a different pace. It looks great.”

And now he is part of it again.