Andy Murray, Andre Agassi, Arthur Fery: Laver Cup All-Access Pass | The Sports Agents

0:02This is a global production. I just, I don't, my first and foremost goal is not to screw it up because this can live on its own. Just listening to the grunt of Carlos Alcón. I know, I'm actually, yeah, you want to talk about intimidating me right now, I mean, jeez. Hey, can you keep it down a little bit with that serve? I'm sorry. He's obviously in the zone. He's very focused. I've never heard you raise your voice until now. Keep it down with that serve. Keep it down. It's too noisy.

0:41Go. I love it. I love it. Keep bringing it. I love it.

0:58Hello and welcome to the Sports Agents. Today we're coming from the O2. Behind me you can hear Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev warming up ahead of the Labour Cup. They're going to be teammates for Europe who are taking on the world. It's kind of tennis's version of the Ryder Cup. And we're going to get a chance to chat to Andre Agassi, Andy Murray and Great Britain's Arthur Ferry about retirement, rivalries and what it's like when the loneliest sport in the world becomes a team game. Andre, thank you so much for talking to us ahead of what is going to be an exciting weekend. it's clear that this is a role you really relish being captain of the world yeah I you know last year was my first year when we were home and you know I had a great time I had a great time because of these guys you know we're close it's a camaraderie and and they're the best in the world at what they do so their attention to detail and knowing what they need and getting to know them over the especially over this last year and getting in other coaches and how they process and and figuring out how not to screw them up and having the best seat in the house.

2:03I mean, this is an incredible arena, and it's incredible players, and it's an incredible weekend of tennis. And it's a format that is unfamiliar to tennis in the sense of every week, you're an individual, you're on the tour, you're traveling on your own. Coming together as a team is something that all the players seem to really relish. Take us back to your experience, because you've written so candidly about the loneliness of being a tennis player. Yeah, I mean, team is different. You know, I mean, unfortunately, when I played Davis Cup, I also had my teammates being Sampras, Currier, Chang, who was all fighting for number one in the world.

2:38So didn't feel like much of a team. Yeah. No, it was just like whatever you need to do to beat your best, do it. And we won as a team, but it felt a little bit more individual than the next generation of Americans with the Roddicks and the Marty Fishes and the Easterners and the Bryan brothers. But with that being said, you know, these guys here, if you think about it, right, they're playing for the best players in the world, right, as their own team. But at the same time, they're also impressing them, you know. So they just have so many reasons to be sharp and at their best competing against the best in the world.

3:13So the level of intensity and quality of competition is unparalleled. unparalleled. I mean, listen, people play great in slams because they want it, but it's very individual and you can get different levels of tennis at a slam. Here, it just seems like the format combined with the atmosphere of this team dynamic is pretty spectacular tennis. You said in your book that there was a perceived team, or you've talked about a perceived team until you experienced a real team, which is this experience for you now. How much would you have enjoyed being in a labor cup team oh you know i would have loved it i would have loved again it's not just like it's not just a team it's also the format right the format allows for explosive sprint kind of tennis right so you're playing two sets with a tiebreaker for the third you know you have a value of one point for each match on the first day a value of two points on the second day value of three points on the third day so it's it's hard to break away and just blow something out you know it always gets intense everything matters you know and so you know for that I got to say uh you know that would have been that would have been fun not coming out here worried about three out of five or not coming out here worried about you know a deep three setter and having to come back the next day you know it's just you're coming out here you're letting it fly and then you know you have plenty of time to recover and do it again and your experience that they are then kind of you know soaking up these players coming having you as a captain for them must be you know such a treat and such a wonderful experience so what what do you give to them do you think well i hope they feel that way but you have to earn that you know you don't you can't demand respect i mean there's a level of your own accomplishments that maybe you know maybe leads the way in the beginning but the truth is you have to listen more than you talk you know you have to understand you know more than you teach you know you have to be what they need you to be you have to understand how they process and so there's a lot of learning to do now that that learning is kind of slightly behind me I kind of know most of them pretty well now we can all relax into each other and and then and then other things so you're trying not to screw them up then you're trying to be a north star for them at the same time which is like hey I'm not just talking about this weekend.

5:35I'm talking about moving forward, about raising the ceiling of your potential. So your coaching style, would you say that's the kind of direct inflection on the experience you had in terms of the coaches you experienced as a young tennis player? Have you learned how not to be? Well, they teach me more about what not to be than I do. I mean, some players love information. Some players can take three pieces of information in real time, understand it, process this and apply it. Others need to focus on one thing that frees them up to do so many things they do well anyhow. And, you know, and you just have to learn, you know, you have to learn how somebody processes.

6:14So, yes, I learned from my coaches because they were good enough to learn from me and what I needed. And, you know, but I was also different than these players in a lot of ways, too. So, so, yeah, you learn how important that relationship is for sure. And of course, you know, these players week in, week out are going around the world fighting each other, as you've alluded to in the York Davis Cup experience. How do you get them to bond and want to do it for each other? What's your style of motivation? This event speaks for itself in a lot of ways. I mean, a lot of guys want to be here without any coaxing.

6:51You know, it's just like in some ways it's a healthy week off, even though the pressure builds to the weekend. you know it's a couple hours it's practice they need to anyhow it's a trip over to Asia from here which which makes sense to be in London in some respects or San Francisco as last year so they know that they're not going to fatigue themselves too much come weekend time but they're going to get that intensity of pressure and competition so and they know the crowd's going to be wonderful there's a lot here for these players to just want to be and again you're just hoping to bring out the to not interfere with the best of them so you're about to say i thought bring out the best of them and you definitely did that for taylor fritz against carlos alcaraz last year because he hadn't beaten him until that weekend um and you must have added something to his performance what was it what did you say to him oh you know a lot of things a lot of simple things you know just being see tennis is an interesting game you'd rather have i hate to say it but you rather have the wrong game plan with total conviction than the right game plan that you're questioning but if you can have the right game plan that you buy into and you're not questioning then your execution becomes spot on with the right strategy right so you try to you try to shine a light on things that he has inroads in um and you try to remind him that he's gonna have to do everything well so it's a lot of homework for you ahead of a match like that to kind of understand and distill what you're going to say?

8:21No. No? No, I know the game well enough. I know these players. His game well enough. Yeah, I watch. I mean, everybody's been waiting four and a half months for Carlitos to come back. So everybody knows his game. I know Taylor's game extraordinarily well. I know what he can do. You see how the court plays. You see how it bounces. You see where the limitations might be and what somebody does especially well. And then you apply the difference. And I understand from just chatting around here that the practice sessions for you this week are so important you'll do your media now and then you're focusing on these players i have one non-starter for this event i don't miss one ball of practice i i need to see where they're at mentally i need to see where where they're at with what they're feeling on the court i need to see you know i need to listen to them i need i need the feedback on what they're feeling i need to do a lot of listening the first few days because that puts you in a position to speak their language when the weekend comes.

9:21You've clearly got so much passion still for the game. And I think there's not a human being, I don't think, that is in my orbit that hasn't read your biography, which is one of the great sports biographies of all time. But it's a very sad book in many ways. And there's an individual in that who wasn't enjoying his sport until he got into his late 20s. Do you love it more now than you did? Oh, yeah. I think, I mean, not saying you didn't read it carefully, but you're right. It's a part of it was a tough, a tough, a tough reality. You know, I mean, playing. Tennis is tough. Yeah, tennis is tough.

9:55But playing out of fear is is the worst form of the sport, you know, and I did that for a lot of years. I was always supposed to be the best in the world, raised pretty intensely to do so. And when I did, I didn't feel quite so fulfilled by it. So I self-mutilated for a period of a few years and then found a way to climb back. But I got to say, you know, the universe is a redeeming genius, you know. It gave me a chance to play a lot of years with my eyes turned outwards for things that meant more to me than just tennis. I always needed a reason besides tennis for myself. And education became a big part of it.

10:31And once my eyes turned outwards, I felt like I could start offsetting some of my tougher memories with some good ones. I think that's a balancing act a lot of sports people find hard, isn't it? That you have to be so intense. At what stage can you turn your attention to the world almost without it jeopardizing the focus that you have on your sport? And I'll never be so bold as to speak about something I don't know, but I've got to believe there's different challenges in an individual sport versus a team sport, right? Here we're alone. We have our team, don't get me wrong. I mean, you'll see it out here behind us now.

11:05I mean, we have people we count on, people that help us, whether it's mentally, physically, technically, recovery-wise. I mean, it's full-on. Back in my day, I had these people, and they just called it an honorage, you know what I mean? So now I look at them, and I think, you know, they're just being smart, you know? And yeah, and so it's made the game get better in a hurry. And those entourages around players now, do they look more like teams? The traveling kind of circus that goes with them? They look like teams, they act like teams, and they give no trade secrets away. It's not, you know, this isn't like dynasties in team sports where something gets passed down.

11:44So you have to fight to kind of understand what people are adding to their world. I mentioned to you before we started chatting, the last time I saw you, you were with your wonderful wife, Steffi, in Las Vegas. We went to your fantastic school that you opened there. You obviously are, you know, a tennis golden couple. did your experiences in the sport play into whether or not you wanted your children to play tennis did that because you would look like the perfect genetic kind of makeup for tennis wouldn't you so you know listen the gene pool is quite large so you know let's not be too sure you know about how our genes moved on but with with that being said you know I I listen I just have to be honest With what we experienced as children in this game, we wouldn't wish it on somebody that we potentially didn't care about, let alone somebody we loved.

12:34But it had to be their life and their choice. So, yes, they hit the ball a few times. They played soccer a little bit. My son got into baseball and stayed with it. My daughter got into dance and stayed for a long time. So the idea is that, you know, raise a child in their way and they'll never depart from it. And that was our goal. our goal was to say what's important you can say what's important our job as parents is to not to let you get away with less by living what it is you claim is important because either you don't know what's important or we're letting you get away with less right so our methodology had much more to do with raising children than it did what they did and finally obviously this event is you know going to be one of the the highlights of the year for so many people who come here and watch some fantastic tennis as well but i think they probably want to know what goes on behind the curtain when you're in the the changing rooms ready to come in do you give a big kind of rousing speech to send your players out or it seems your demeanor is very calm i can't imagine you shouting at them have you got words of wisdom lined up and so with the way i was raised if you want to get me to stop listening just raise your voice so i i do i do like speaking softer because it tends to make people lean in and listen more carefully um but when you hold up a piece of paper and you say listen we gave our lineup and this is who they're matching up against you so let's be clear everybody that you're playing expects to beat you let's go out there and show them that they're wrong so the words that the words are ready to go yeah well you choose you choose what you want to say and again you're talking differently to different players so as a whole team no you can get you can get everybody fired up in a certain way but when you talk to an individual you know you kind of pick the part of their brain that seems to resonate with their neurological and the rest of their body.

14:27John McEnroe found it very tough to get over the line as captain. You came along last year and you won it. If you win it again this weekend, do you kind of raise the voice and celebrate? Will you be fist pumping the air? I mean, last year, I never smelled like champagne in my life. I had to live with that smell for three days. You're looking forward to that again. I'm going to celebrate with the guys if we happen to get over the line again. And, you know, I mean, once you can be lucky, you know. Twice I think maybe you're doing something right. But John and, listen, John, Patrick, Bjorn, I mean, they set the stage for helping this event become what it is.

15:06So I don't have any ideas of competition there. I do want to live up to, you know, Roger's vision. you know Tony Gottschik's vision Steve Sack's vision and execution and all the effort that goes into making this such a great experience so I just, I don't, my first and foremost goal is not to screw it up because this can live on its own Just listening to the grunt of Carlos Alcoa I know, I'm actually You want to talk about intimidating me right now, I mean geez, hey can you keep it down a little bit with that serve? Sorry He's obviously in the zone. He's very focused. I've never heard you raise your voice until now.

15:50Keep it down with that serve, huh? Keep it down. It's too noisy.

16:00Go, go. I love it. I love it. Keep bringing it. I love it. Okay, I think the war of words has begun. Andre, thank you so much for your time. It's been lovely to chat. Thank you. Coming up in a moment, Arthur Ferry, who had that incredible run at Wimbledon this year, beaten in the semifinal by Alexander Sverev, who've been watching for the last few moments, and Andy Murray. Andy Murray, finally, on the Sports Agents. Join us in a moment.

16:37Arthur Ferry, welcome to the Sports Agents. We were just saying, you know, all these stars of tennis around all over the place. We're getting a bit starstruck. As someone who, you know, had your kind of breakthrough summer, if you like, into the nation's consciousness, when you're involved in an event like this and you're brushing shoulders with the likes of Andre Agassi, do you kind of go, oh, it's Andre? It's incredible. I'm still getting used to it slowly as the weeks go by and more and more of these big events that I'm playing. But, no, it's incredible to be here. you know, Leverkup, it's only the best players in the world and definitely does feel weird to be sharing the changing room with a select few of the top guys and walking around and see so many famous names.

17:20Now in the summer we were all behind Team Ferry and that run in Wimbledon has presumably taken your fame to a different level, it's taken your life to lots of different places. Describe for us the last few months and how it has changed. It's been different the past few months since the grass season I would say there's more attention, more... What's the one moment where you've gone, oh okay, invite someone? I don't know if I can say this but I met Tom Cruise yesterday, did an interview with Tom Cruise and that was quite surreal. So yeah, some of those moments you meet really famous people or just getting recognized in the street things like that small things um things that i'm not used to yet it's only been a few months and um how was tom tom was great yeah yeah really really nice um and there's always some some aura around people who have been that successful in at their jobs and for so long as well it's uh yeah really impressive to see to see that um him directing the room and knowing exactly what he wants um how he wants his uh his scenes to look like everything so you're involved in a scene no we were doing an interview but we were speaking a little bit i thought suddenly that you've just changed gear slightly yeah we're going into movies i'm not quite an actor yet no but the mission is possible see what i did there um in terms of your progression in tennis now you've got to the semi-finals of wimbledon so let's talk about how you cement yourself in those latter stages of tournaments and and get yourself up in the top seats yeah it's not easy um you're asking me a question that maybe i don't know the answer to quite yet either um but no just trying to practice well every day uh and and see whether yeah see where that takes me you know all the hard work kind of paid off all at once at wimbledon um at least in the general public's eyes and um yeah because you're not an overnight success in your eyes you know the hard work it's taken yeah it's been many many years of hard work and good results better results and now yeah big breakthrough like that Wimbledon but um no moving forward in the future it's just still you know sticking to the same things that have been working and and I had I had a good run in in the US even though it was a 250 it's still a final so that was confirmation that things are working and that my my level is is uh is there that I'm I'm I have my spot in the top 50.

19:53Can we talk about what you did with Carlos Cano in terms of getting your body right? Because we understand Jack Draper is also seeking to kind of rectify things that are continuously causing him problems and how important that was for you to overcome those injuries in a way that mentally I imagine was maybe even more taxing than the physical side of things yeah i was battling with uh this arm injury pretty much since i left college in 2023 up until well up until the start of this year um since since last year's wimbledon it was better i was playing more tournaments but still after australia had to take two months off again the bone bruises come back um but then yeah we we did some work with uh with carlos um and did Did he do that remotely with you?

20:43Yeah, mostly remotely and changed a few things. He just looks at a video of you. Yeah, I mean, he knows the biomechanics of the serve and he's been doing that for 15, 20 years. So he has a lot of experience in that. And straight away, I hadn't even told him really what my issue was. And he could tell with the way I was serving where my arm was going to hurt. So he kind of knew the steps to make that better. And there were some issues with my serving motion that he highlighted. How hard is that, though? You've served one way all your life, presumably, to make that adjustment. It's hard, yeah. I mean, obviously, it's difficult.

21:26And it takes a few months to get used to. But I adapt quite fast to changes. And also, mentally, I was really struggling to having to deal with that pain in my arm for practice after practice. and tournament after tournament and setbacks and all that. So I was really ready to make a big effort in changing my motion. And in my head, it was almost like, yeah, if it helps my arm and my performance goes down 5%, 10%, I was willing to take that trade-off. Really? And that was because the pain was so bad? Yeah, because I wasn't able to play as many tournaments as I would have liked to. My ranking was much lower than my level.

22:13deserved and so I just wanted to get on the court and play back-to-back tournaments and get to a to a ranking where I felt really satisfied. Did you have any points through that period where you thought it wasn't ever going to be and that you were gonna have to settle for either leaving the game or playing at a lower level because you couldn't get your body right? thoughts here and there but I was the real problem was was serving serving was the issue and in practice I was okay I was able to practice actually through those years I was able to practice completely fine from the back it was just every time that I started serving in a match environment then then the pain would come back but yeah there were a few moments definitely where it's tough to keep going another setback you you're lost you don't know you don't quite know in which direction to go and no deep down I was always trying to always trying to find solutions but yeah at times you're thinking oh maybe I'm gonna have to just play doubles something like that because that was half the serving load you're serving only once every four games instead of once every two games half a serving load maybe my arm would have tolerated that six months later you're on center court in a Wimbledon semi-final sport moves quickly right Yeah, that's the beauty of tennis and the way that this sport works.

23:34It's such a fine margin between, as we know, between the top 10, top 20, and a guy ranked 100 can beat a guy ranked 30 in the world. So such fine margins once small things click together and you're mentally in the right space, you can do really well. I heard it at Wimbledon. Yeah, and it was your home court, your home tournament, you know, living in the postcode. And of course, that breakthrough happening at Wimbledon, which is so close to where I grew up. And it's the most special tennis tournament for me in the calendar. So doing that there and playing on centre court, three matches, that I would never have even thought about before the tournament started.

24:24How did you keep, the thing that I was watching you through that tournament, thinking when every time you were winning going to bed that night how are you kind of getting yourself composed again to go on court the next day because the excitement levels you know were just ramping up but that's again that's i think that's years of years of hard work and experience kind of all accumulating and but you hadn't had that experience before i hadn't had that exact experience but i'd been i'd played grand slam matches i'd played wimbledon before i played i played the australian open earlier this year i played davis cup all those experiences contribute to exactly what you're saying.

25:00When you win your second round and suddenly you're in new territory, I've never been to a third round of a slam before. What had you planned at the beginning of the tournament? Do you keep that two weeks clear, even though you hadn't got beyond the third round before? Do you always have the two weeks so that you can get to the first? I'm always intrigued with the kind of lower ranked players who haven't gone beyond the second week. Yeah, of course. Psychologically, you have to. Yeah, I mean, I knew... You didn't have a holiday booked. I did, I did. I knew that I was going to have a holiday and some time off after Wimbledon.

25:31So I booked from the end of the first week until the end of the second week, I booked a holiday with some friends. Did you get your money back? No, I didn't get the money back. Did you get somebody else to take your place? Don't tell me your friends went. Some friends went. No! Well, one friend went and kind of hoping that I was going to meet him there. But then, yeah, the tournament kept going. He came back. He actually came back from the holiday before you left? He came back a day later. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So you won't do that again, will you? And it wasn't an easy place to get to either. Oh, really?

26:07Where was it? It was an island in Greece. Oh, really? So it's a flight plus a ferry. And anyway, yeah, it took him a day to get there. He spent a day there watching my second round, I think it was, on my third round and then came back the next day. Well, I don't think for any of the major tournaments that any of your friends are going to be doing that anymore. And ironic that it was a ferry as well that he had to get. Arthur, thank you so much. Enjoy this experience. I'm sure you are going to. There'll be many, many more of them. And we'll speak to you again on the Sports Agent sometime. Thank you very much.

26:37Thanks for having me. Thank you.

26:46so um here we are at the o2 finally with andy you'll hear in a minute we've been trying to get you on the podcast for two and a half years so do you go chin on the microphone i'm just i'm just doing that now okay that's not a thing that's how commentators do it right i'm not a commentator but that's how commentators do it yeah i don't know that because if you've got so much noise around you yeah obviously you're going to be as direct as you can into the mic so yeah i didn't know that but we're i mean this would be fine for us now right yeah don't worry um okay andy murray welcome to the sports agents thank you do you know how long i've wanted to say that for two and a half years two and a half years that's how long i've been going and it's a bit of pressure on me then we've really built this up almost from day one you were a kind of target person why is that Because obviously great admiration for you, but also feeling that if we could get Andy Murray onto the sports agents, we would be really quite serious podcasting.

27:39Oh, God, OK. All right. So, yeah, your wisdom, everything you have to kind of impart. This is the next 15 minutes. It's laid out there for you. right? Let's talk first of all about the Labour Cup, which is what we are here to talk about, because 2022 was a historic and the most emotional kind of way to say goodbye to a legend of the game in terms of Roger Federer. And you said one of your precious, most precious moments in tennis. Yeah, I mean, it was unbelievable to be a part of that. And obviously we knew that he was going to finish here um but yeah on the court after the match like seeing him like with rafa and i guess the way that his career ended that you know i think all people always want like a like a fairy tale type ending like a hollywood ending you know like everyone would have loved to have seen federer having like one last great run at wimbledon potentially but i personally thought that the way that he did it here playing doubles with his you know biggest rival and seeing the two of them like you know really emotional next to each other on the court was yeah it was really special to be a part of and um yeah i love being here um being like part of the you know the team and having bjorn borg at the side of the court and john mackenborough at the side of the court and it was yeah it was a brilliant brilliant experience and the four of you including novak obviously to be playing in that tournament as well was very special because you know that that great rivalry that you all had and that era was starting to unravel that day wasn't it that was starting to come to an end did you when you were kind of on the court did you feel this is this is the beginning of a of the end almost well I mean it was certainly you know getting that way but for me it was just more about like you know Roger was someone that I looked up to like as a kid when I was playing you know there is a not a huge age gap but five or six years and so when i was you know 13 14 year old kid watching the sport like he was someone that i admired and that i love watching and then you know became you know a competitor and rival of his and then um yeah so to see him you know coming towards the end of a great career and seeing how much i think he meant to like not all of the players there but like all of the fans and stuff.

30:00Yeah, it was a really special day. I wouldn't say it was necessarily a sad day. You know, I thought it was, like I said, it was a great way for his career to end. I think they were happy and nostalgic tears as much as sad tears. I think so, yeah. And yeah, it was just nice to be there celebrating everything that, you know, he meant to the sport and everything that he'd achieved. You've said in the past, in terms of your Davis Cup appearances, that playing in a team is really special to you in such a lonely individual sport. And we got a sense of that chatting to Andre Agassi as well, who's talked about the loneliness of being a tennis player.

30:35So another opportunity to come together in a tournament like this seems very attractive to top tennis players to be able to join a team. Yeah, and I think for me, you never know how you're going to feel about a match or an event until you actually get out there on the court and experience it. and this was my first time in 2022 playing in the labor cup and yeah when you stand at the net before going out there and you've got obviously an amazing arena to play and it's packed and you look over at the side and you've got bjorn borg standing there roger federer rafa nadal novak jokovic you know you you feel you feel the the pressure to go out there and perform In a good way.

31:22Oh yeah. Like I loved it. Like how can you, if you, you know, if you genuinely like love the sport, like if you can't get up for playing a match in front of those guys, then yeah, something's probably wrong. And yeah, it was just, I just, I loved the whole environment of it. I loved, I loved being part of the event and yeah, being around all of, you know, these are all, some of them obviously are my sort of contemporaries, but you know, a lot of them like John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, you know, Roger. These are people that I, you know, looked up to. And yeah, it was really special to be, you know, to be a part of their team.

31:59And of course, you now have yourself moved on, transitioned into a life that is not, you know, the daily grind of being a tennis player. You're dipping your kind of toe into various places in terms of your coaching. And obviously, Novak himself, and you work together a little bit haven't you and obviously um jack and you're working together does that does that give you enough the coaching does it give you kind of a sense of still belonging to the sport while not committing yourself completely to that kind of week in week out commitment to tennis yeah i mean i think i'm i'm very happy if i didn't have any coaching i'd be very happy i'm more than happy being at home with my family I don't feel like I need the the coaching but you know the opportunity to work with Novak was something that well it was it was unique I was not going to get probably that chance again um and yeah I thought it would be you know worth the the sort of risk to try and see how it how it goes and you know I learned a lot from that experience and obviously been doing a little bit with Jack but you know he's you know he's not he's not played much um obviously with the the injuries and and so forth so we'll see how that goes moving forward yeah he's um apparently working a bit with carlos canna who of course worked with arthur ferry as well to try and resolve some of his his injuries that he's unfortunately succumbed to over the last year is he mentally getting into a good space and dealing with that because i imagine their experiences that you can share your learnings from as well yeah i think like long rehab periods are really difficult for athletes, particularly when you don't feel like you're making lots of progress, because it's not like, you know, injuries, you don't go from having pain one day to not.

33:48It's not like on a Monday, you've got lots of pain in your shoulder, and then it's gone by Wednesday. Like, it takes a long time often, and particularly the type of injury that he's got is quite complicated, and, you know, the symptoms are, you know, very sort of up and down, and it's challenging so you know right now you know he's taking a break he's not you know he's not been doing too much practicing and training just now and I think you know in the next next month or so he's going to get back on the court and hopefully get himself ready for the start of the new the new season because he he was really kind of obviously going places up to number five in the world and I think there was a real excitement that the the void that you know you'd kind of left he was filling this desire from a British tennis point of view to get behind somebody who He just seemed to have so much personality on court as well.

34:35And similar to you, that kind of a bit raggedy in terms of, you know, he didn't kind of like, he didn't mind throwing up on court. He didn't mind kind of, you know, looking a little bit messy at times. It wasn't kind of difficult, I think, to really find yourself rooting for him. And the country seemed to really get behind him. And in terms of just that kind of stoppage, you know, that he's been away from the scene. And then Arthur Ferry comes along and has a great summer at Wimbledon. You know what the British tennis fans are like. Is he kind of able to deal with that, that he's out of sight a little bit now?