Wimbledon was where young pretender Murray became a man (2024)

IT’S almost over for Andrew Barron Murray. But then it almost never began.

There is an inevitability about the Scot limping away from the world of tennis because of injury. One suspects nothing else would have stopped him. Body played mind in a match spanning more than 20 years. The body, ironically in its weakened state, has finally won. There will be a last hurrah at SW19 and at the Paris Olympics in the doubles format. But the lone warrior has gone out on his shield.

At 37, Murray is fated to view a future that does not include competitive, elite tennis. At 16, the future seemed bleaker still. He was diagnosed with a bipartite patella (basically a split kneecap). There was no viable fusion and there were fears on how it would impact on his career. Murray was condemned to play in pain. He did so for more than two decades, adding injury to injury. His medical history reads as if he has been involved in a catastrophic accident: back surgery, hip surgeries, broken bones in foot and wrist, chronic back pain, shoulder issues, ankles encased in protectors. He will go out on his shield, presumably after playing doubles at the Paris Olympics.

His triumph is not just to have become Britain’s greatest-ever sportsman but merely to have competed so well for so long.

Murray is a boxing fan and one wonders if he will be consoled by the words of legendary trainer Eddie Futch to Joe Frazier on the night of the Thrilla in Manila. Futch called time on his charge’s relentless, defiant efforts with the words: ‘Sit down, son. It’s all over. But no one will forget what you did here today.’

Murray has similarly emblazoned himself on the national consciousness. No one will forget his endeavours. Much of that has to do with tennis. And much of that has to do with Wimbledon. But sport has a way of slowly revealing a man’s character. He has gradually but inexorably shone under that attention.

But, first, Wimbledon and Murray has to be addressed. It is a tumultuous story of hype, controversy and wonderful triumph. This correspondent saw all of it. Wimbledon has a grasp on the British public that was always strong but grew vice-like in the Murray years. Here was the Young Pretender, rocking up as an 18-year-old and immediately winning two rounds, before succumbing to fatigue and the experience of David Nalbandian.

Here was the Desolate Loser, crying in the wake of being beaten by a great. Here was The Warrior, growling and grumping, falling behind calamitously and then winning against such as Richard Gasquet, Fernando Verdasco and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. The boy who proved a split kneecap was a minor obstacle treated great players with the same defiance.

Wimbledon was where Murray became a man. The teenager who walked through the gates became a father who could reflect philosophically on matters of independence, sexual inequality and players’ rights. In the parlance of the reality show, it was quite the journey.

No one outside the Murray nerve centre can fully appreciate how Wimbledon and its attendant pressures impacted on the lad from Dunblane. There were the mouth ulcers that would come as the championships approached. The endless press conferences and the move from sports pages to news pages. The attention was all-consuming but Murray emerged with only minor wounds.

He learned the dangers of the press comment, sometimes the hard way. Sometimes his deeply Caledonian humour did not translate into Southern Counties English.

He pressed on, nevertheless. He never tried to be someone he was not. This meant he could be deeply depressed in defeat, particularly at Wimbledon. One loss to Rafa Nadal in 2008 sent him into a voluntary seclusion. He emerged, however, with a determination to improve his fitness, to find a way to be competitive in an era of unprecedented brilliance.

If one compiles a list of the five best tennis players of all time, then Murray’s contemporaries of Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic must be on it. This was the challenge facing the young Scot. He charged at it with all the urgency of Robert the Bruce spotting an English knight on a field outside Bannockburn.

Murray won three majors, an ATP World Tour title and became world No 1 when the Big Three were in their pomp. Oh, and he and his brother Jamie also won the Davis Cup, the World Cup of tennis. And Murray won two Olympic gold medals in the singles, more than the combined total of Fed, Nadal and Djokovic.

This is not to instigate a tiresome argument that he was better than any of the above. It is to state that he was not cowed by them and could overcome them.

Wimbledon was his biggest test. A nation expects. A young lad has to produce. Murray endured awful pain — physical and emotional — in his tilts at the championship. It was a mercy that he overcame Djokovic in the 2013 final. The year before had produced pressures and trials that would have tested the most resilient of souls.

Yet Murray — again like Bruce, but this time without the spider — kept coming back, kept saying he could win, kept learning and honing to produce a body and a game that would succeed at the highest level.

It was fascinating to watch his development. I would not claim to be an intimat but I was an obsessed observer at Wimbledon. I’d be at every press conference. I would be on court for every match. I would walk up to Aorangi courts to watch him practise. This was my job. But it was also my pleasure.

Most pressmen — and we are a jaundiced, cynical crew — came to like Murray. We could see what Wimbledon threw at him. We saw how he faced up to that. Murray always gave what became known in the trade as ‘afters’. That is, after the official press conference he would meet with a couple of representatives of the British press and these quotes would be disseminated amongst us. There was an odd intimacy about these chats down the years.

He was always interesting in victory, consigning achievement to the past and looking eagerly to the next challenge. But he was open in defeat. A year after he’d conquered Wimbledon, climbing the stairs to plant his flag in the players’ box, Murray was beaten in three sets by Grigor Dimitrov. Dignified in the official press conference, he praised his opponent and detailed his own failings.

I was ushered into one of the small rooms abutting the press conference room for the ‘afters’. One could see the dampness of perspiration on his shirt, the fatigue in his eyes, that look of a very fit man who seems suddenly very ill, the hesitation as he took his seat.

The defeat had come months after back surgery but Murray dismissed all attempts to tie him to such reasons for defeat.

He was wretched, doing something he was not contracted to do but doing it because it had become one of his duties, because he believed it was the right thing to do. He answered the questions with grace.

I remember this with the same clarity as I recall his punch in the air on his defeat of Djokovic. I also remember the moment in the players’ lounge when he would give his time to those seeking an audience. He once fulfilled a young girl’s dream of having dinner with him after he had just won a match. She was terminally ill. Her parents were overwhelmed that a committed athlete, playing in his biggest tournament, would alter his plans to accommodate their daughter. He will not thank me for that recollection but it is a sign of who he was and is.

There were no aspirations to sainthood in this or in anything else he did. He knew he could be surly. He knew he could disparage his team with an awful gusto.

But, gradually and then irrevocably, he knew who Andy Murray was, for minor ill and considerable good. Slowly the nation began to feel a sense of this, too.

On my returns from trips to report on Murray in the early years, taxi drivers would always ask: ‘What is he really like?’ I did not and could not know precisely. But I liked what I saw and what I heard from him. It is perhaps one of his most underrated triumphs that the public at large eventually came to the same verdict.

He will be missed as an athlete and a character on the public stage. But no one will forget what he did on a patch of grass in south London and beyond.