Andy Murray plans desperate late hitting session with Serena Williams before Wimbledon mixed-doubles as they have never shared a court before
ANDY MURRAY is planning a desperate late hitting session with Serena Williams before they begin their Wimbledon mixed-doubles challenge today.
Murray and Williams will partner up against Andreas Mies and Alexa Guarachi this evening after deciding to form a dream-team – even though they have never shared a court together before.
The British hero has booked a practice court two hours before they are due to play in the hope Williams will join him for a brief training session to work out their tactics for the match.
Murray, in his BBC column, said: “I don’t think we have ever hit together over the years, but hopefully we are going to do that today before this evening’s match.
“Playing mixed doubles with Serena is something that hadn’t been on my mind until this opportunity came up.
“I don’t know her that well and we haven’t played together before or spent much time hanging out – so let’s see what happens!
“But I think we do a lot of things quite similarly on court that should bode well for us as a partnership.
“Both of us play predominantly from the baseline and we are both good movers and athletes. And she serves unbelievably well.
“Serena’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou has been keen for us to have at least one practice together before we go out so we can have a chat about things together on court.”
Murray admits they have held no in-depth discussions about how they want to play when they get into action, in a first-round tie expected to be held on one of the show courts to cope with the huge interest from the spectators.
And when they have spoken, it has been more about how they are raising their kids than tennis.
He added: “We did chat briefly here at Wimbledon the other day and we spoke a little bit about the tennis – what side of the court we are going to play on.
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“We also spoke about our injuries because she has had some issues with her knee recently and I’ve had the problems with my hip.
“Aside from that, we were chatting about parenting because we’ve both got kids that are similar ages and that led to discussing how handy the crèche is here on site, which a lot of the players use.
“But the conversation hasn’t extended to exchanging any parenting tips just yet.”