2012: A remarkable sporting year – Andy Murray on grand slam success
11 September
It is not as if I think about the US Open every single day, but people ask me about it so I try to remember. Ollie [Golding] or Jamie [Baker] asked me the other day what happened immediately after winning, those 30 seconds and, seriously, I can't remember.
I think I threw my shirt into the crowd, and my racket. Everyone asks me about the watch [which the makers had asked him to wear when he won]. I just started with Rado before Wimbledon and I forgot to put the watch on for the presentation there, so I got into trouble. Before the US Open, everyone in my box was saying: 'Don't forget to put it on,' but I had no idea where it was. They had put it in my bag and I couldn't find it because it was in a zipped pocket underneath everything else.
Concentrating in a match can be hard. For instance, the music that was played in the breaks during that final: I think they used the songs I chose from the year before but, in a match that's five hours, it's hard to remember, because you have to focus the whole time.
So the other day I asked one of the guys in the team which song was played at the change of ends before I went out to serve for the match. Apparently it was Feel So Close, by Calvin Harris. As it happened, the day after the final I bumped into him at JFK airport. I really like the song but I had no idea it was him; I didn't know what he looked like. Then he came over and said: 'Congratulations, well done.' I said: 'Thank you very much, nice to meet you.' But that's why trying to remember what was going in that last game was a bit of a blur.
My life has been a bit of a rollercoaster … and I hope it stays that way for the rest of my career.
There are going to be downs and I'll lose close matches, but I hope I'll be in a position to play for grand slams in the future. I may lose one. I may lose a couple. But I know I can do it because I've got the right team of people around me. That's where winning the US Open was a huge motivation. I realised after that match that all of the stuff I do in the off-season was worth it in the end.
We lose 10 to 15 times every year. A lot of weeks, you're losing. You need to learn to deal with that and to be able to use that as motivation. I think you learn to accept it the older you get – so long as you can use it in the right way.
But I now know that winning is more motivational than losing. I learned that this year because I always thought that, wow, losing the Wimbledon final – so now I want to win it even more. I went on to another level of motivation after the Olympics and the US Open.