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WIMBLEDON


July 9, 2015


Jamie Murray

John Peers


LONDON, ENGLAND

MURRAY‑PEERS/Erlich‑Petzschner
4‑6, 6‑3, 6‑4, 6‑2


THE MODERATOR:  Questions, please.

Q.  Quite a ride, isn't it?
JAMIE MURRAY:  Yeah, yeah, it has been.  Yeah, I mean, we're in the final.  We're excited.  We won five matches?  Yeah, five matches we won.
Yeah, it's been a good couple weeks so far.  On Saturday we'll try to win one more.

Q.  What was it like being on Centre Court like that?  I thought after the two semifinals today, the crowd was almost three‑quarters full.  You must have loved every second of that.
JAMIE MURRAY:  Yeah.  I mean, look, it was a weird match because, you know, for us, me personally, I don't know how John was feeling, it was a weird atmosphere because Johnny, he was clearly injured.  He was struggling with his knee.
Mentally it was quite difficult for us.  It's the biggest match of our careers.  Down the other end is a guy on one leg.
It's a strange one to be faced with that.  I took a little while to get going.  Kind of always felt we were going to find a way if we kind of kept at it.
I think at the end of the third set, John started to play a lot of great returns.  Then at the beginning of the fourth set, again, we got a great start.  We kept that momentum going forward.
You could see that they kind of visibly went away a bit.
I mean, we got through.  Exciting for us to play the final.  We'll look forward to that on Saturday.

Q.  John, when you had the groin strain a few weeks ago, did you at any point think you weren't going to make it to Wimbledon?
JOHN PEERS:  I knew I was always going to get up.  It was just a matter of how well I was going to get up.  Actually I haven't had any pain in the groin since Tuesday the first week, so I got lucky that we started on Thursday so I could actually get a couple of days to actually get it going.
Then it's got going.  Touch wood, it's got back to normal.
JAMIE MURRAY:  He didn't play nine or ten days there, nothing.  Keeping fresh.  Yeah, here we are, so...

Q.  Jamie, were you making contingency plans in that case?
JAMIE MURRAY:  No.  I mean, I knew that he's going to be able to play.  I mean, that's what the physios told him.  Just got to stay with that.
I mean, I don't even know whether I could have found somebody else to play if it had come to that.  I didn't spend any time thinking about that.

Q.  Jamie, you were 21 when you made your previous Wimbledon final.  Are you going to be able to take this in more?  Will you make the effort to do that?
JAMIE MURRAY:  Don't know really.  I haven't really thought that far ahead.
But, I mean, I think when I played before in the mixed final, it all came really fast.  I didn't expect that to happen or anything like that.
Of course, you know, we've been playing kind of every other day.  Each match we're preparing for, getting ready for.  Tomorrow is the same, we'll be able to practice and prepare as well as we can for our next opponents, at least have time to kind of think about it.
At that weekend I won, I played five matches in three days.  We were constantly on court knocking out matches.

Q.  Jamie, you must get fed up being Andy's brother the whole time.  Is it nice to be recognized properly now for what you do?
JAMIE MURRAY:  Yeah, I guess so.  I mean, I spent most of my life that way.  You know, people come and talk to me because they want to talk about Andy, which is fair enough.  That's how it goes.  I accept that.
We're doing a lot of great things ourselves.  Yeah, things have been good for us the last two or three years since we started playing together.  I think all the hard work we've put in is kind of paying off.  We get to play on Centre Court again in the Wimbledon final.
I'm sure growing up, well, I certainly wanted to, I don't know about John, maybe he was thinking about Rod Laver Arena more, but we'll get the chance to do that, be real excited to be Wimbledon champions.

Q.  Any chance of Andy's boycott?
JAMIE MURRAY:  The last time he came to watch me play was in the final of a match we won.
JOHN PEERS:  See what happens tomorrow.
JAMIE MURRAY:  See what mood he's in, yeah.

Q.  Will you be here tomorrow?
JAMIE MURRAY:  Well, yeah, we'll come in and practice.  I'm not going to stay here and watch Andy's match.  Yeah, we got to focus on our match.  I'll watch it probably just at home on TV.  It's more relaxing I think.  But, yeah.

Q.  Any other memories of when you were 21?
JAMIE MURRAY:  I think probably the thing I remember is, I mean, the last point.  I've seen it so many times.  Just being in the Royal Box, lifting the trophy, again having it taken away from you pretty quickly.  That's it, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, all the doubles players, that's what we're playing for.  We want to play in a men's doubles Grand Slam final.  We're getting the chance to do that.  I think we're going to try to make the most of it.

Q.  Jamie, it could be amazing history that you create with Andy if he can do it.  I think it's over a hundred years since a couple of brothers have done what you could potentially do.  Are you optimistic that the family double could happen?
JAMIE MURRAY:  Well, I mean, he's got to beat Federer and maybe Djokovic.  We have to beat Rojer and Tecau.  I'd probably rather be us than him, I think (laughing).
He's going to have to play a lot of great tennis over the next few days if he wants to lift the trophy again.
He's been playing brilliant the last few months.  He's been feeling confident.  I think he's got a great chance to winning it.

Q.  Jamie, 2009, you were 135 in the rankings, you were having to play challenging events.  Did you at any point sort of consider whether it was worth carrying on or not?
JAMIE MURRAY:  Maybe, yeah.  I mean, I think probably when me and John started playing together in January or February a few years ago, I think probably that for me was probably going to be close to like my last kind of effort to really try to get back there.
Because, you know, the previous two years, I played a lot of, yeah, challenger tournaments, some tour events.  But mainly played with loads of different people.  Wasn't much fun for me.  Wasn't really enjoying it.
I think the opportunity came up to try to make something happen with John.  Thankfully it's worked out and we're here today.

Q.  John, can you go back to when the two of you got together and tell us how that occurred.
JOHN PEERS:  Pretty much I met Jamie, I think it was in Australia.  He dropped me a message just after the Aussie Open had finished.  He said, What's your plans after the Aussie?
I said, I was looking to try and play some of the tour events in Europe.  I didn't have a partner.  My partner at the time was looking to play singles and play in a few more challenger events.
I said, All right.  I'll come over and train with you for a week and then play a few tournaments and see how things go.  And we're still going.
JAMIE MURRAY:  It wasn't like a massively exciting story.
JOHN PEERS:  No.  We didn't even know each other that well.  I think the first time we met was at the Aussie Open a few days before.  Since then, unfortunately it's not the most scintillating story.

Q.  Who was your partner?
JOHN PEERS:  I was playing with John Patrick Smith.

Q.  How long did it take before the two of you realized this partnership would work and it would last for a long time?
JAMIE MURRAY:  I mean, to be honest, like when we played our first match in Montpellier, I actually felt really good about it.  I kind of liked his style of play for me.  Yeah, we played some good matches in that tournament.  You know, then I don't even remember what we did after that.
But then we went to Houston, having maybe not won that many matches.  We all of a sudden won, managed to beat the Bryans in the final.
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like then it kind of, you know, took off or anything.  But we knew that we could compete against the best teams.
I think we started spending a bit more time with Louis Cayer, as well who has helped us over the last couple years, not so much recently because he wasn't helping us, but of course the last seven weeks because of Davis Cup, he was able to help us again.
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest reasons why we're where we are today.

Q.  John, the Ashes could be quite an interesting summer.
JOHN PEERS:  Already started that.  Five for 280 odd.  Interesting next couple days.

Q.  Cheering Aussies on as well?
JOHN PEERS:  Trying to get him on that side.  He jumps on whichever side is winning.  He's Scottish.  It's more my coach that I have to hear it about, anyone else I walk past.

Q.  Jamie, in the past your doubles partners have had to put up with the fact that occasionally you'll choose to play with your brother when he wants to play doubles.  You pretty much stuck with John now?  You haven't been playing with Andy so much.
JAMIE MURRAY:  The only reason I played with Andy was because I couldn't get into tournaments with my partner at the time because our ranking wasn't high enough.  The only tournaments I played with Andy were the Masters one and a couple of the 500 ones.
I didn't have a regular partner at the time or the guy I was playing with wasn't high enough for us to get in together as well.
Haven't needed to.  For the last kind of year and a half, we've been able to play the Masters tournaments ourselves, so...

Q.  (Question regarding mixed doubles.)
JAMIE MURRAY:  I was having problems with my right shoulder which was bothering me in the leadup to the whole tournament.  I thought if I want to get well for the doubles, I'm just wasting energy, stressing my shoulder, to keep playing extra matches that could be a waste of time.
You know, if you don't necessarily do well in the mixed, you're out there wasting energy for our doubles, which is what we want to do well in.  We played two long five‑set matches as well this week.  I think it paid off not to play mixed.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports




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