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A hundred years from now, a tennis fan will ask the hologram floating in his ear about the great male athletes of the early 21st century.
The hologram will add poetry to the trio known as the “Big Three”: Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Before the advent of nuclear-powered strings and 200-mile-per-hour serves, they dominated the sport, winning some 70 Grand Slam titles.
Then, almost as an afterthought, it mentions several other people who have won Earth’s most important tournament, before the tour expands to include the exoplanet Alpha Centauri.
“Stan Wawrinka and Andy Murray have won three Grand Slams each and are the next best players of the Big Three era,” the hologram would say.
Humanity in 2124: Don’t trust your holograms, especially if they mention that in his final Wimbledon match, which was probably the penultimate match of his career, he had to endure a 21-year-old people decide at the last minute. His compatriot Emma Raducanu, who is reviving her fledgling career heading into the second week at Wimbledon, withdrew from the tournament in order to prioritize singles opportunities in the open draw rather than against The chance to be on the court with her idol Murray.
Andy Murray’s career has been spent under the pressure of living up to expectations. (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
So, as well as planning to play doubles at the Olympics, it was indeed Wimbledon’s goal to start working towards securing his rightful place in the tennis lexicon. No disrespect to Wawrinka, a fine player with a stellar career, but Murray hasn’t gone against the grain over the past three decades by becoming the ultimate thorn in the side of so many assumptions about tennis, with holograms and Tennis nerds who use holograms remember him in the same sentence.
Perhaps that’s why Murray has soldiered on for the past year and a half, desperate to once again push for the commercial end of the sport’s biggest event, long after nearly everyone saw it wasn’t a star. Maybe that’s why when climbing the stairs becomes difficult, he limps onto the court to take on the best players in the world.
At 4 a.m. in March, Murray was standing in a hotel gym in Indian Wells, Calif., with Brad Gilbert, a former professional player and longtime coach. An early insomniac and a jet-lagged Scot chattering about new racket technology, Murray told Gilbert he might have found a new club that would give him a little something extra… .
Something to prove he still had magic.
Maybe Murray persists simply because he loves everything about his job—the feel of the racket in his hands, the life of a globe-trotting superstar, the unparalleled thrill of intense competition. He was jealous when players like Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz started their journey. If he could, he would go back to where he started, not necessarily changing anything, just because he would do it all again.
“I want to play tennis because I, you know, I do enjoy this,” he said at Surbiton last year, when he played the Challengers instead of the French Open to win on grass before Wimbledon. Extra time.
“I love it. It’s not a chore for me.
In early 2024, Murray and his new Yonex racket were unveiled in Geneva.
But that’s not the case, and despite his roaring 1,000 games, that’s what it seems. But it was also the joy of playing the game he loved and proving all the assumptions about him and his sport wrong.
Firstly, it was thought that the Scot could even excel in junior tennis. You can play golf, but not tennis. Too many talented kids from friendly tennis climates and areas to deal with. There weren’t many indoor courts, there weren’t many expert coaches besides his mother Judy, and there certainly weren’t enough top-level games to help him develop, other than his older brother Jamie.
Murray wasn’t about to let that stand in his way, whether that meant training harder in those early formative years or taking radical steps that few of his peers took.
Jamie Murray said: “My mum did her best to create an environment not just for the two of us but to create an environment for players with a certain level of performance and to bring us together as much as possible , because she knows how difficult it is.
“Obviously Andy left when he was 15 – he went to Spain and he decided: ‘I really want to be a tennis player and to do that I need to go to Spain and train’, and He was obviously very willful. I stayed home.
The habit of playing tennis was formed early. In most cases, a 25-year-old’s forehand doesn’t look much different than a 15-year-old’s forehand. The same goes for attitudes and approaches, such as Murray’s penchant for defying conventional wisdom.
So Andy, nice junior career, but you’re definitely not going to win too many games against Federer and Nadal, or even your teenage friend Djokovic. Born at the wrong time. Unlucky.
He defeated Nadal 7 times and Federer and Djokovic 11 times.
Murray and his Serbian friend played doubles together at the 2006 Australian Open. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Well, Andy, it’s great that you can beat the top players now and then, but the Englishman hasn’t won a Grand Slam in almost a century. Can’t happen.
He went on to win the U.S. Open in 2012 and Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016, although he may have been under more pressure on Center Court than any player in modern times.
And don’t forget those losses, including five Australian Open finals, only to Djokovic or Federer, as he did in the finals or semi-finals of major tournaments.
“I’m playing against guys who have won these tournaments 12 times a year in their career,” he recalled in an interview last year.
But he still won 46 tournaments, including 14 Masters 1000 titles, at a level just below the Grand Slams and far ahead of any player of his era outside of the Big Three. Not against Wawrinka, but he won 16 titles, including only one Masters 1000 title.
Yes, Andy, but number one is out of reach in this era.
He reached this height in 2016, when Nadal and Djokovic were still in their prime and Federer had three years to win a Grand Slam and reach the final.
It’s not easy.
deeper
Fifty Shades of Gray by Andy Murray
“You know, I basically did everything,” he recalled. “I’ll be on the track. I’ll be in the gym lifting weights, I’ll be doing core work, I’ll be doing hot yoga, I’ll be doing sprint drills, speed drills, just throwing everything at myself.
He paid the price, putting so much pressure on his hip that he had to undergo resurfacing surgery in 2019. He turned those words into a challenge to prove them wrong as much as possible, rising to No. 36 in the world last summer.
He loved being a kind of guinea pig and was one of the first top athletes to test the limits of a butt made mostly of metal.
Murray’s hips first derailed him and then became one of the hallmarks of his career. (Ashley West/CameraSport via Getty Images)
“No one really knows where the limit is,” he said.
“I want to see what that is.”
However, it’s all just his inner competitive contrarian, which extends to his off-field empathy for subjects and people the sport might belittle or seek to avoid.
Men’s tennis players have never shown so much respect for the women’s game. Murray discussed this and hired a female coach, Amelie Mauresmo.
They also rarely speak ill of other players or support any behavior that might cause significant discomfort to one of the players. Murray was one of the first to criticize the ATP Tour for dragging its feet for months before announcing it would investigate domestic abuse allegations against Alexander Zverev. The German settled a case involving allegations brought by his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child outside court during the French Open.
Murray bought an apartment in Miami and studied the training and business practices of NBA players to see what he could learn from them. He opened his own store when he didn’t like the way management companies treated athletes. He buys a shabby hotel in Scotland where his family celebrates weddings and other important occasions, even though Jun Wen tells him this is a bad idea. He and his wife, Kim, turned the place into a luxury destination. He collects art.
Murray eventually joined King and his team at Wimbledon after winning the title in 2013.
So while others began planning his retirement, of course he would never leave the tennis courts. Of course, he’s going to do it his way, trying to squeeze every opportunity for glory out of his body that he may or may not have, and with the new Yonex racket he tried out earlier this year, it’s got him Found Gilbert in Miami.
He wouldn’t just acquiesce, even trying to return from back surgery for a spinal cyst in time for a final singles match on Center Court that he would have lost. There’s a reason Murray holds the record for coming back from two sets down 11 times, the last of which came at the 2023 Australian Open when he played five matches At 4 a.m., after that magical moment, it took him an hour and 45 minutes to defeat Thanasi Kokkinakis 4-6, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-5.
After about thirty years of life and tennis, old habits die hard.
Murray knew the end would eventually come.
Accepting conventional wisdom is one thing. Defeating time and aging are completely different things. Murray has to give it his all, which is the easiest part of the hardest thing because he never knows any other way.
(Photo above: Joe Toth/AELTC Pool, Simon Bruty/Anychance/Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb for sports)
