EMILIO SANCHEZ hopes to pass on his congratulations to his former pupil Andy Murray in person at Flushing Meadows in the next fortnight but for now he will have to settle for watching from afar.
As the fates would have it, a bereavement in the family meant that the Spaniard, who welcomed the Scot to his Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona at the age of 15, viewed Murray's momentous Wimbledon triumph from his native country, but just perhaps the Scottish success story, with a little assistance from Spain, at least helped lighten the sombre mood a little.
"It was fabulous to see him achieve his dreams like that," Sanchez told Herald Sport. "In the final when he had to attack he attacked better, he was the more aggressive in the key moments of the match. The next one is for him to get to No.1 in the rankings."
The only problem is that time stands still for no man, and the intervening period has seen another Spaniard, Rafa Nadal, steal some of the Scot's thunder, not to mention the reigning US Open champion's No.2 seeding for this week. The renaissance man from Mallorca has banished all thoughts of his frailties after that first-round defeat to Steve Darcis at SW19 by winning back-to-back hard court tournaments in Montreal and Cincinnati, while Murray has crashed out to Ernests Gulbis and Tomas Berdych.
If there is a tendency to think that the 26-year-old Scot, with two Grand Slam titles under his belt, would suddenly find himself unburdened and free to rack up many more majors, Sanchez knows such spoils will only arrive if he renews the motivation which drove him to do it in the first place. Others who can be ranked in the danger category include a wounded world No.1 in Novak Djokovic, a reborn former winner here in Juan Martin del Potro, and dangerous big hitters such as Berdych and Jerzy Janowicz, not to mention Roger Federer, now ranked the world's seventh best player.
"Now he has won Wimbledon, it should take the pressure off him to succeed and perhaps allow him to enjoy it more," said Sanchez. "But he still has to find motivation. He is always very determined and professional, but to win more Grand Slams he needs to come back with the same kind of attitude and determination that he showed to win his previous two Grand Slams. There are always going to be other people who want to take his place," Sanchez added. "So we will see how it goes at the US Open. It is coming up to the end of the year, people are getting tired, and it is a difficult tournament to win. But the one who manages to win will be in a very good position to go on and dominate.
"At this moment it is very difficult to say what is a realistic target for him in terms of slams. He has already won two slams, two very good ones, in the US Open and Wimbledon, and obviously he is in a good position to challenge for more. But it is not as simple as to say that because you have won two, you are going to win more. It looks like a very good project for him to go on and win more but there are only four Grand Slams a season and you can only tell as time goes on."
Sanchez was famously given a drubbing as the teenage Scot passed his unofficial entrance exam for the academy, but even he wasn't sure his young charge would ever go on to reach these heights. With two Grand Slam singles wins, Murray is the most successful player in the history of Sanchez-Casal, ahead of two other major winners in the form of Svetlana Kuznetsova and his own sister Arantxa, who was based there for one of her Grand Slam wins.
"I could tell he had a chance," said Sanchez, of a player who has blossomed still further after getting in tow with Ivan Lendl and another Sanchez-Casal graduate in the form of Dani Vallverdu. "But it was difficult to see he would be quite so high. But you always think a player can become better and better if he has the right attitude. The match is perfect with Ivan because they have the same kind of character. When they started winning tournaments you could tell, it is like the apprenticeship and the master. Hopefully, he can follow him up, and also become world No.1 because he is so close to the top already.
"He is always very nice to us, and very thankful to the academy," said Sanchez, who also oversees an offshoot of his Academy in Florida. "So I will, hopefully, get to the US Open because I haven't had the time to congratulate him since Wimbledon."
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