Goodbye, Andy Murray: how the fiery kid I once watched became a Wimbledon hero

By celebrityinfo.online On Jul 1, 2024

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Two-time champion’s ambition, endurance and competitive grit has been something to marvel at over the past two decades

Tennis without Andy Murray is like summer without wine; Wimbledon without Murray is like strawberries without cream. And, at some undesignated point, that emptiness will arrive like one goodbye backhand down the line in fading sunshine on Centre Court.

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Since he first played in the championships in 2005, he has returned 14 times, twice triumphant, sometimes disappointed, occasionally disappointing, but never less than as snarlingly committed as an angry summer wasp. And now? We’re not sure. Nor is he.

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Will we see his like again? In all likelihood, we might not even see him again, or for much longer, anyway.

Andy Murray plays a return to Jordan Thompson during their men's singles match at Queen's this month

But his big-time journey began elsewhere, in his favourite city, one a good deal louder than his native Dunblane. Perhaps because of his obduracy, his gift for protracted drama and his dogged survivability, it seems much longer than 20 years ago that I first watched him, on a warm September Sunday in New York, when he announced his precocious gifts in the boys’ final at the US Open.

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It is the sort of breakthrough that matters more at the time than in retrospect. The impact is contained, the applause a few decibels below deafening. But his peers know: someone new has arrived.

From the upper seats on an outside court at Flushing Meadows that filled as the match went on, the skinny Scot – all light freckles, boney knees and elbows, teenage muscles growing, but too slowly for his liking – seemed to be drowning inside his billowing all-white kit, as he chipped and chopped, scuttled like a crab, sweated like a demented puppy, won like a born champion.

“The new Henman?” a local reporter asked. The coy winner was too polite to speculate. But he did suggest he might become Scotland’s best. In truth, I think even then he knew he would be better than Tim. So did Henman (a four-time Wimbledon semi-finalist to Murray’s two championships there, among his three slams). They have become trusted friends, lonely at the top of Britain’s male tennis hierarchy.

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And now Murray – who was No 1 in the world for 41 weeks eight years ago, a reign that all but wrecked him physically – arrives for the grass season rated 115 in the world at the age of 37. It’s surely his time for reflection on what has been a remarkable story.

A 19-year-old Andy Murray in action during his fourth round match against Marcos Baghdatis at Wimbledon in 2006. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Palpably edgy yet determined and, topped with a mop of ginger-tinged curls, he looked younger than his 17 years that New York day in 2004. Curiously, it seemed everyone called him Andrew back then (a memory that escapes me), but he made a name for himself sure enough by beating Sergiy Stahkovsky (who years later would beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon) in straight sets, teasing him to distraction.

Of the 64 boys who arrived at the National Tennis Center that summer with stars in their eyes, most have retired or are nearly done, major winners, perennial contenders and honest pros, cut down by injury or age, immune to failure but handsomely remunerated, a few hanging on: Gaël Monfils, Fabio Fognini, Marin Cilic … and Murray’s brother, Jamie, still by his side, perhaps lifting gold together at the Paris Olympics. Perhaps not.

But two decades later, it is the younger Murray who ploughs on with seemingly unquenchable ambition, the hair thinning into spreading gossamer, the muscled body straining to answer his spirit’s weakening plea. There are flickers of genius, to give faint and cruel hints that there is enough old magic for a miracle or two.

There will be no more miracles, but there will be moments – such as his recent victory at Queen’s in his 1,000th match … followed inevitably by his on-court collapse because of a spinal cyst, withdrawal and an umpteenth visit to a back surgeon.

Some find the spectacle sad. I think it is curiously uplifting. It’s as he wants it, perverse at every turn, his future as difficult to read as his cunning tennis. It separates him from nearly every player on the tour. A lot of things do. Murray is hard to nail down, on the baseline or in amateur psychology.

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