Amelie back on Centre stage

AMELIE MAURESMO made her entrance late, slipping into the last vacant seat on the front row of the Centre Court players’ box after Andy Murray had basked in the warm, appreciative roar of a near-capacity crowd. This was his moment to savour. One the Frenchwoman had told him over dinner on Wednesday night to try and enjoy. After all, you never know when it will happen again. It is only seven years since Mauresmo experienced the same sensation of being introduced as a defending champion at the All England Club. She was 27 then, the same age as Murray now, but her straight-sets win over Jamea Jackson was not accompanied by the same sense of history and emotion as the return of Britain’s first male singles champion for 77 years. Accordingly, Mauresmo seemed intent on making sure this was all about ‘the pupil’, as Murray called himself, and not his teacher, who eventually fell in the fourth round against Nicole Vaidisova in 2007. It helped that this was such a business-like encounter for the British No1 but, apart from adopting Murray’s Adidas-branded kit instead of the Nike sportswear she wore as a player, Mauresmo seemed perfectly content to fade into the background as much as possible. There were plenty of other women in the Murray camp – girlfriend Kim, mother Judy and grandma Shirley Erskine in the Royal Box – to share the limelight, too. Murray said: ‘I have felt pretty calm the last 10 days or so. Whether that’s to do with Amelie or not, I’m not 100 per cent sure. But I’ve enjoyed all of the practices. ‘She’s a very calm person, the way she speaks and the way she explains things. It’s been good so far. ‘One of the things she said was she tried to take in the atmosphere and the experience of walking out on the court as the defending champion. You never know if you’ll get the chance to do it again. ‘She has quite clear memories of doing that herself and so that was one of the things she told me to try and do.’ Mauresmo’s calm demeanour will be crucial to the success of her relationship with Murray. The British No1 likened his younger self to Dennis the Menace yesterday in discussing his guest editorship of ‘The Beano’, and Murray’s mother, Judy, has said he wanted a coach ‘who would really listen’. Mauresmo certainly played that role yesterday. She leant forward and watched more intently when Murray began chuntering to himself and acknowledging David Goffin’s backhand winners down the line, and politely applauded as her charge ticked off his service games with impressive ruthlessness and fluency. It is tired and lazy to suggest Mauresmo’s calmness is automatically a female quality, when it is probably more to do with her upbringing and personality than her gender. I happened to sit next to her during one of Marion Bartoli’s early-round matches last year and her demeanour barely changed while her fellow Frenchwoman endured her typical peaks and troughs of high emotion. Bartoli looked towards Mauresmo constantly for support, whereas Murray is much more his own man. That trust between coach and player, though, will take time to build, and yesterday Mauresmo seemed to be very clear on one thing: this was Murray’s day in the sun.