History will show that, 10 years to the day since he ended Britain’s 77-year wait for a Wimbledon men’s singles champion, Andy Murray was beaten 7-6 (7-3), 6-7 (2-7), 4-6, 7-6 (7-3), 6-4 by Stefanos Tsitsipas in the second round of the championships.
What the record books won’t reveal is that an incorrect line call may have not only denied Murray the chance to serve for a famous victory, but also thwarted his best chance in six years to make a deep run at the All England Club.
The crucial moment came at 15-30 in the ninth game of the fourth set, where Murray neutralised a 128mph Tsitsipas serve with a lovely angled return. With the Greek lining up a reply from outside the doubles alley, a linesman called Murray’s shot out, a decision that Aurelie Tourte, the French chair umpire, immediately endorsed.
Had Murray challenged, the Hawk-Eye replay would have shown that the ball clipped the outside edge of the line. That would have meant a replay, and a second chance to bring up two break points that, had Murray been able to capitalise, would have left him serving for the match.
“The 15-30 point, my return was in?” Murray asked incredulously when the subject was raised in his press conference.
“That’s obviously frustrating, because I remember, I think it was a backhand cross-court return, very short. I probably would have won the point.”
The previous evening, at a similarly important juncture late in the first set, Murray had been all too quick to request a review, stopping play mid-point and inadvertently putting himself set point down as a result. This time, though, he placed his faith in the officials.
“It was right underneath the umpire’s nose,” said Murray. “They shouldn’t be missing that, to be honest. If they’re unsure, they should let the player know.
“I assumed the umpire would have made the right call. The linesperson, I think, called it out. The umpire called it out. You can obviously argue it’s a mistake on my part. Ultimately, the umpire made a poor call that’s right in front of her.”
Murray’s frustration will not be eased by the knowledge that, had he been able to repeat last summer’s grass-court victory over Tsitsipas in Stuttgart, a navigable draw lay ahead. With Serbia’s Laslo Djere awaiting in the next round ahead of a potential last-16 meeting with either Christopher Eubanks, a four-set winner over Britain’s Cameron Norrie, or Christopher O’Connell, the Australian world No 73, Tsitsipas cannot face a fellow seed before the quarter-finals.
It is the kind of opportunity that Murray dreamed of when he skipped the French Open in order to focus on his grass-court preparations at Challenger events in Surbiton and Nottingham. Unsurprisingly, he said he would be in favour of electronic line calls replacing line judges.
“Right now I obviously would rather it was done automatically,” said Murray. “It’s a hard one, because I probably prefer having the lines judges on the court. It feels nicer to me.
“The challenges, I think the crowd quite like it. I think for TV, they probably quite like it. But when mistakes are getting made in important moments then obviously, as a player, you don’t want that.”
Yet Murray too made his mistakes. Not least among them was his failure to return a Tsitsipas second serve early in the fourth-set tiebreak, an error for which he furiously berated himself. The cost of that miss became apparent a couple of points later when Murray came out on the wrong end of a cat-and-mouse rally behind his serve, inviting the Greek in with a short slice only to put up a tame lob when Tsitsipas charged in behind a meaty approach. That rally, at 30 shots the longest of the match, gave Tsitsipas the first mini-break and a momentum he would not relinquish.
The good news for Murray, as a contest halted late on Thursday night with the Scot leading by two sets to one went into a decider, was that his 36-year-old body was showing no sign of injury. Murray had crumpled to the turf in alarming fashion after twisting his groin in the dying seconds of the previous evening’s play, but any fears he might be physically compromised were allayed three games into the resumption, when he raced forward to flick a backhand winner off a Tsitsipas drop shot.
What ultimately did for the former champion was not his body, but rather his only lapse on serve in four hours and 40 minutes, spread over two days, in which the margins could not have been tighter. A Murray double-fault at 0-30 in the third game of the decider brought up three break points for Tsitsipas. Murray gamely fended off the first two, but an unforced error on the third handed the Greek a breakthrough he would not relinquish.
“It doesn’t come easy, especially when you’re playing Andy Murray,” said Tsitsipas. “He’s a marathon man.
“Those two sets felt really long. I remember at some point in the fifth, I was thinking it feels like we were playing forever.”
Yet nothing lasts forever, as Murray appreciates only too well. For all his efforts, for all the promise of his results in the build-up to the fortnight, he once again leaves SW19 with a sense of crushing disappointment. Asked whether he would be back next year, Murray, who gave a lingering farewell wave as he left Centre Court to a standing ovation, was non-committal.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Motivation is obviously a big thing. Continuing having early losses in tournaments like this don’t necessarily help with that.
“It’s similar to, I guess, last year [when he was beaten by John Isner in the second round]. I had a long think about things, spoke to my family, decided to keep on going.
“I don’t plan to stop right now. But this one will take a little while to get over.”