CAM IS THE ‘CHICKEN’ WHO BARKS

CAMERON NORRIE’S coach claims his little chicken has turned into a dog this fortnight – with the heart of a lion.

And if opponents worry about his extraordinary athletic powers on the tennis court, they should try playing him at cards.

Argentinian Facundo Lugones has worked with Norrie since he was a teenager at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

He has taken him from a somewhat lost fledgling into a man just one game away from the Wimbledon final, albeit a match against Novak Djokovic.

He explained: “In Argentina, when you’re taking care of someone, you call them, ‘your chicken’, like you’re taking care of him.

“When I started travelling with him, all my friends would ask me, ‘How is your chicken doing?’ That’s why I call him that still.

“Mind you, he’s become a dog now. He’s not a chicken any more.”

Dog as in dog-fight, it seems, as there is not a moment on or off the court that Norrie is not competing over something.

“He plays a lot of games with his fitness trainer, Vasek,” Lugones revealed. “Card games, backgammon, ludo. They always play for coffees, competing and keeping track of the coffees they owe to each other.

“He can’t unwind from competition. He needs to compete at everything – but just for coffees.

“Cameron’s not about to make his fitness trainer go broke – and he wins all the time. Like 20 coffees down, sometimes.”

When there is nobody else to battle, Norrie fights with his own body, pushing himself to limits that simply are not possible for lesser mortals.

“I don’t know how much other players do, but it would be hard to beat how many hours Cam does, especially when he’s fitness training,” Lugones said.

“He stays in that red zone where the heartbeat is just insane – 200 beats per minute.

“A normal person can’t even do a minute-and-a-half on that. I don’t know, they could probably die! They would certainly be close to passing out.

“He can play tennis for eight, nine minutes on that.”