Andy Murray

By total coincidence, the Thailand Open ATP tennis tournament is on at exactly the same time we are in Bangkok. Most people reading this know I used to play a bit of tennis (just a bit!), and that Judy Murray (Andy's mum) was my coach in Scotland. Andy, Jamie (his big brother), and I all trained together at Stirling...SO, it's kind of hard to believe that I'm about to watch Andy play Roger Federer in the final today!!


After realising that the tournament was on and Andy had already won his 1st match, we tried to make contact through texts, e-mails, web-texts etc to my mum, Judy, and eventually, Andy... He was able to get us tickets to his 2nd round against Robin Soderling (seeded 5, from Sweden). It was brilliant to see him play again, and even better to watch him win in two close sets 7/6 7/6. We'd applied for Vietnamese visas which were due to arrive the following night, so we decided to come back and watch his quarter-final against Robby Ginepri (seeded 3, from USA). We'd then get a train early the next morning to the Cambodian border, on our way to Angkor Wat.


Ginepri reached the semi-finals of the US Open last month and is currently # 21 in the world so he was certainly the favourite...but Andy won! He played a brilliant match, really attacking from the start, and an unbelievable final set, to win 4/6 6/4 6/3. He'd managed to get us courtside tickets that day, so we made a lot of noise :)


We couldn't leave then! With Lleyton Hewitt withdrawing threw injury, the #1 player in Thailand, Paradorn Srichaphan (seeded 7 here) was Andy's opponent for the semi's. PD had this great idea to have a Scottish flag made at a tailors on Khao San Road (the very touristy market area in the city). For about $10, we had a 1.5m flag made overnight, to give him some good home support!

The atmosphere was INCREDIBLE in the stadium, and this time we had VIP tickets (!) - we did our best to cheer as loud as possible, but the Thai crowd were pretty hard to outdo! It was an amazing match - great points, and a serious battle from the very first point. I was so nervous watching him! Amazingly, he won again - 6/7 7/5 6/2.
So once again, Ankgor Wat can wait another day - Andy's playing the # 1 in the world today, and I'm not going to miss it :)