Andy Murray emotionally explained how tennis has helped him overcome the childhood traumas of the Dunblane Primary School shooting and his parents’ divorce – but he could not do so face-to-face.
The pain from being in the school when Thomas Hamilton shot 16 children and one teacher dead before committing suicide is still very raw.
Despite Murray rising to No 1 in the tennis world rankings and winning three Grand Slam titles, there was still an air of mystery surrounding his younger years.
That was until the Scot broke his silence while filming his feature-length Amazon documentary Andy Murray: Resurfacing.
In the access-all-areas comeback video, Murray refuses to discuss that horrific incident in Dunblane as he attempts to tell of his fightback from hip resurfacing surgery.
However, he then calls director Olivia Cappuccini and leaves a teary voicemail as he lets the public see his vulnerability.
“You asked me a while ago why tennis was important to me. Obviously I had the thing that happened at Dunblane. When I was around nine,” Murray said.
“I am sure for all the kids there it would be difficult for different reasons.
“The fact we knew the guy, we went to his kids club, he had been in our car, we had driven and dropped him off at train stations and things.
“Within 12 months of that happening, our parents got divorced. It was a difficult time that for kids. To see that and not quite understand what is going on.
“And then six to 12 months after that, my brother also moved away from home. He went away to train to play tennis (in Cambridge). We obviously used to do everything together. When he moved away that was also quite hard for me.
“Around that time and after that, for a year or so, I had lots of anxiety but that came out when I was playing tennis.
“When I was competing I would get really bad breathing problems. My feeling towards tennis is that it’s an escape for me in some ways. Because all of these things are stuff that I have bottled up.
“I don’t know because we don’t talk about these things. They are not things that are discussed.
“The way that I am, on the tennis court, I show some positive things about my personality and I also show the bad things and things I really hate.
“Tennis allows me to be that child, that has all of these questions and that’s why tennis is important to me.”
