Even as he struck the very last ball of his professional career – a backhand pass that sped past Tommy Paul and sent Taylor Fritz scurrying across the baseline, only to sail fractionally long – Andy Murray was still achieving the impossible.
Seconds later, his Olympic men’s doubles challenge alongside Dan Evans would be over. But the wonder was not that the British thirtysomethings were outgunned 6-2, 6-4 by their American opponents, both of whom are ranked just outside the top 10 in singles and in the prime of their careers. The real marvel, after saving five match points against Japan’s Taro Daniel and Kei Nishikori in the opening round, and then another two against Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen of Belgium in the second, was that Murray and Evans reached the quarter-finals in the first place.
By any normal reckoning, Murray should not have been in Paris at all. It is barely a month since he underwent surgery to have a spinal cyst removed, a procedure that requires a six-week recovery period for most people. But Murray is not most people, and little about his career has been normal. Before he went under the knife, doctors told him he would miss both Wimbledon and the Olympics. Predictably, he played both, metal hip and all. Of course he did. Few athletes have taken more delight in confounding medical opinion. Yet the pain he endured to make it happen should not be underestimated.
“It’s been really hard,” said Murray. “Physically, pain wise, I feel bad. Physically, I can obviously can go on the court and perform at a level that’s competitive. We were close to getting in the medal rounds here. That’s OK. But the pain and discomfort in my body is not good, and that’s why I’m happy to be finishing.
“Because if I kept going and kept trying, eventually you end up having an injury potentially ending your career. So I know that now is the right time, and physically.”
Endings are rarely perfect, and against Fritz and Paul it was a losing battle from the outset. In an ideal world, Murray’s body would have allowed him a last stand on the singles court, as he had planned. Even so, it would be hard to imagine a more apt scenario for his farewell campaign, certainly in this final, injury-plagued phase of his career. He has battled his body from the moment he first impacted on the public consciousness as a gangly teenager on the grass courts of Queen’s Club in 2005, when he was seized by cramp, dramatically crashing to the turf as though picked off by a lurking sniper, in a last-16 defeat to Sweden’s Thomas Johannson.
Cramp got the better of Murray again a couple of weeks later at Wimbledon, derailing him in the closing stages of a five-set struggle with former finalist David Nalbandian. The need to build a body capable of withstanding the demands of the tour was clear, and so Murray set about transforming himself into one of the tour’s fittest, most durable athletes. His brutal Miami training blocks became part of tennis folklore. When he reached his first Wimbledon quarter-final in 2008, he famously celebrated by pulling up his sleeve to reveal a flexed bicep, a signal to his team that the hard miles were paying off.
Murray would ultimately pay a heavy price for his punishing training regime and seemingly limitless capacity for suffering. But by the time the pain in his right hip began to sound the death knell on his best years, at Wimbledon in 2017 – where, effectively playing on one leg, he came within a set of the semi-finals – his legacy had long since been secured. No longer simply Andy, he had become “The first British man to…”, an epithet virtually interchangeable with his first name. The first British man to win an Olympic singles gold medal since 1908. The first British man to win the US Open in 76 years; the first to reach a Wimbledon final in 74 years, the first to win one in 77 years, and the linchpin of the first British team to win the Davis Cup since 1936. What more apposite way to go out than defying his body one last time, on a stage that has defined his career?
Murray’s physical transformation was just one aspect of his refusal to accept the hand fate dealt him. Stronger yet was his will, so powerful that it reshaped the reality around him. For Murray was not the greatest player of his generation; Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic saw to that. Even when rankings or form or draws suggested otherwise, it rarely seemed likely that Murray would reach grand slam finals ahead of that feted trio. But he did it time and again, making a mockery of logic and outside expectations. Murray became the fourth voice in a three-way conversation, refusing to be silenced. His talent was undeniable, but it was as much Murray’s tenacity, his sheer stubbornness, that enabled him to contest 11 major finals, win three, and become only the 10th man in the open era to reach the title round at all four.
In a sense, Murray’s career has been a web of paradoxes and impossibilities. He was never the best until he was the best. That moment came in 2016, his annus mirabilis, when Murray finished the season by winning five straight tournaments, culminating with the ATP Finals, where he dislodged Djokovic as world No 1. In the toughest era there has ever been, he retained that position for 41 weeks until his body betrayed him. Murray was the man who could, even when it seemed others should; a player who left an indelible imprint on the sport at a time when it seemed nigh-on impossible to do so.
Consider what today’s tennis landscape would look like without Murray. Had he not beaten Djokovic in the US Open final of 2012 and then again at Wimbledon the following summer, the Serb would already be out on his own with 26 majors, clear of Margaret Court as the most successful player in history. Federer would have an Olympic gold medal in singles, the only significant honour to elude him. Nadal, whom Murray defeated for the first time in the 2008 US Open semi-finals, might have gone on to beat Federer in the final of a third consecutive major, a victory that would have seen the Spaniard complete a non-calendar year grand slam at the 2009 Australian Open.
More often, of course, Murray was bested by those players. Djokovic denied him the winner’s trophy four times at the Australian Open and once at Roland Garros. Federer thwarted him in finals at Melbourne Park, Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows. But all the near misses and disappointments only made Murray’s victories more meaningful. In an age of tennis immortals, his often tearful setbacks made him relatable in a way that the near-infallibility of his rivals never could.
Murray’s authenticity, his willingness to bare his emotions, to fail and keep coming back for more, is one of the reasons why he was so widely beloved. After a stuttering start with the British public, who initially failed to warm to his dry humour – particularly his infamous quip about wanting “anyone but England” to win the 2006 World Cup – Murray’s emotional speech after losing the 2012 Wimbledon final won hearts and minds aplenty. A month later, as he avenged that defeat against Federer on Centre Court to win the first of his two Olympic gold medals, he was cheered to the rafters. His love affair with the people had begun in earnest.
Even so, it wasn’t always pretty. The flipside of Murray’s authenticity was the incessant chuntering, the swearing, the furious broadsides he so often directed at his hapless support teams. A poker player he was not.
“I wish I’d behaved differently at times on the court,” said Murray. “But there’s lots of things, like my character on the court, that I did like.”
No less agreeable was his character away from the court. Taught to play by his mother, Judy, a former Scottish No 1, Murray had a natural respect for the women’s game and, typically, was no more afraid to articulate it than he was to appoint Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. After losing at Wimbledon in 2017, he memorably took to task a reporter who suggested that his vanquisher, Sam Querrey, was the first American player to reach a major semi-final since 2009. “Male player,” Murray shot back, mindful of the achievements of Venus and Serena Williams, the latter of whom he would partner two years later in the Wimbledon mixed doubles.
Thoughtful and eloquent, Murray gradually was not only a champion for the WTA, but also a spokesman for his sport, and perhaps even its voice and conscience. He never shirked difficult questions. From the use of technology and the abuse of bathroom breaks to scheduling issues and the ATP’s lack of a domestic violence policy, whenever there was an issue to be discussed, Murray’s opinion was always among the first sought. He was invariably worth listening to.
No appraisal of Murray’s achievements would be complete without a respectful nod to the final phase of his career. After an emotionally-charged press conference at the 2019 Australian Open in which he said his ailing hip would no longer allow him to compete effectively, Murray looked to be done and dusted. An arthroscopic procedure the previous year hadn’t worked as well as hoped, and he was unsure he would even be able to limp on for long enough to bow out at Wimbledon.
A fortnight after a valiant five-set defeat to Roberto Bautista Agut, which was followed by a farewell video tribute featuring contributions from Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, Murray returned to the operating table, having a metal hip installed. No player had successfully returned to top-flight singles after undergoing such a procedure.
Five months later, however, Murray resurfaced on the grass courts of Queen’s Club and won the doubles title alongside Feliciano López. By October, he had claimed the 46th title of his career at the European Open in Antwerp. And while that was the last trophy Murray would lift, he continued to break new ground.
At last year’s Australian Open, he saved a match point to edge a near-five hour first-round thriller against Matteo Berrettini, then returned less than 48 hours later to win the longest match of his career, recovering from two sets to love and a break down to beat Thanasi Kokkinakis in five hours and 45 minutes. That match, which finished at 4.05am, was the second longest in Australian Open history. It was typical of Murray’s warrior-like mentality – he never did go in for the routine – and yet, in the circumstances, those feats of endurance felt almost superhuman.
Last August, Murray achieved a ranking of 36th in the world, the highest he would climb with his resurfaced hip. In a sense, it was a milestone almost as great as any in his career. But in recent months, his body has failed him with growing frequency. In March, he ruptured ankle ligaments in Miami; no sooner had he returned, just in time to compete in one last French Open, than his back began to deteriorate. There were only so many more times he could achieve the impossible. It was time to go.
“I’m happy with how it finished,” said Murray. “I’m glad I got to go out here at the Olympics and finish on my terms, because at times in the last few years that wasn’t a certainty.”
In truth, there were never any certainties. Scotland didn’t produce tennis stars; not world-beating ones like Murray at any rate. But from humble beginnings at his local club in Dunblane, where he started playing aged three and honed his competitive instincts, as younger siblings so often do, against his brother Jamie, a future doubles world No 1, Murray rose to conquer the world. That, perhaps, was the biggest impossibility of all.
“If I went back to the beginning of my career, when I started in Scotland, no one standing here, myself included and my family, none of them, would have expected that I would have gone on to do what I did,” said Murray. “Even when I was 18, 19 years old, there were still a lot of people who doubted my ability, talent, work ethic and mentality.”
No one doubts him now.