"I was actually playing golf": Andy Murray details being asked to coach Novak Djokovic

Andy Murray admitted that the move to coach Novak Djokovic was very much unexpected as he detailed how he was asked and what his wife Kim thought about the move.

Murray found out his first assignment in rising American talent Nishesh Basavareddy as Djokovic's coach and while he didn't expect to be coaching so soon or even has a plan about his future with Djokovic, he is looking forward to the ride.

“I was actually playing golf. We’d actually been exchanging messages. Novak had messaged me just wanting to chat," said Murray.

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“I was on the 17th hole of the golf course and the guy I was playing with said to me, ‘Do you know what’s next’? I was like, ‘No, not really’. He said ‘Do you have any plans to do any coaching’? And I said, ‘Honestly, I can’t think of anything worse to do right now’.

“And then 30 minutes later I was in the car and I called Novak, and then we had a conversation and he asked if I would be interested in helping, which I obviously wasn’t expecting.

“I said to him, ‘Look, I need to think about it and talk to my family’. So I spoke to them and, after a couple of days, I thought that it was a pretty unique opportunity and experience.”

“My wife was very supportive of it,” he added. “I was actually going to be in Australia anyway for a few days during the tournament. She was surprised, obviously, that he’d asked me, but she was really supportive of it.

“Maybe if it was a younger player, where it was maybe long term, (you) might be looking at five, six years potentially. I’m not sure that that’s necessarily the case with Novak – but you never know if he’s doing well. But she was very supportive.”

But while they are together for now Murray isn't sure what the future holds for their partnership. "I thought it would be a good idea to try it together and spend some time in the off-season through Australia and see how it goes for both of us, because it’s a little bit different. It’s not the usual kind of set-up.

“So it made sense to trial it and see if it works. And then we said we’d make a more definitive decision after the tournament.”

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