Beyond the three Grand Slam titles, the two Olympic gold medals and the Davis Cup heroics, Andy Murray has built a career on making the improbable happen.
No player in the game's history has won more matches from the brink, at two sets down. Few have come through such injury turmoil, so often, and made it back to the court. Drop the man into a tank full of hungry Great Whites and he’d probably swim out wearing a shark tooth chain.
Even he, though, surely cannot have believed here, at 9-4 down in a tiebreak slated as first-to-10, in what at that stage looked absolutely certain to be the final match of his life in professional tennis.
Partner Dan Evans certainly did not. "I never thought, 'Oh, we're going to win this from this position'," the 34-year-old said, as the British pair stared down five match points against their first-round Japanese opposition of Kei Nishikori and Taro Daniel. Crucially, though, he added: "But I didn't think we'd lost."
And Murray never does, a player whose aura has always been less about joie de vivre and more about a refusal to die. It is why he is here, delaying the moment when it will all be over, reeling off seven points in succession to scrap into what is still only the second round of these Games, when he might have settled for a softer route out long ago.
"I wasn't standing to serve thinking, 'Oh my God this is about to be over, what am I going to do?'" said the 37-year-old, but he must have been alone. "I've had that mental toughness and strength that at times, certainly earlier in my career, was questioned. I'm really proud of that side of things."
Some questioned the wisdom of Murray carrying on to a fifth Games when Wimbledon in early summer had laid on such a fitting faux farewell, following his first-round doubles defeat alongside brother Jamie.
At a set and a break down on Sunday night, it looked a fool's errand. Suzanne-Lenglen was two-thirds empty, and this contest felt like filler, as the locals escaped in search of dinner, having seen home favourite Gael Monfils in the match before.
Throughout a swift 6-2 first set dismantling, the animation was all elsewhere, cheers drifting in from afar as Roland-Garros instead got behind the French players in action across the clay, Murray's potential au revoir reduced to a fringe act.
In time, you thought, we might simply have to scrub this ending and convince ourselves that Centre Court was really where the story wrapped up, Paris merely the setting for some strange post-credit scene that only the real Marvel nerds had stuck around to watch.
Even accepting that Murray would say the game owes him nothing, it felt like short change. If sentiment was currency, though, perhaps the day's lot had simply been spent in willing Rafael Nadal into the second round and today's singles clash with Novak Djokovic on Philippe-Chatrier earlier in the afternoon.
But when he decided to make the Olympics his point of departure, Murray was never signing up for a stroll along the Seine, though he did admit that cycling through the Athletes’ Village will be among the things he misses most once waving goodbye.
"I wasn’t going to play at Wimbledon and not play at the Olympics if I was in the team,” Murray said of a call that this morning feels wholly vindicated. “I wanted to be here and compete at the Olympics because, well just because how much I enjoy it, how much I love it.
“I think it’s an amazing, amazing event for many more reasons than just the tennis.”
As a sport for which the Games is not the pinnacle, how and whether tennis ought to wear the Olympic rings remains the subject of debate for some. Really, though, it is on the participants to define importance and no tennis player has worn them with more pride than Murray.
After last night’s epic he will do so at least once more, though already there is resolve to go further.
“It’s something I’ll remember forever,” said Evans, who, by the way, more than played his part at the death. “But let’s not make it one match. It’d be amazing if we went on to do something really special this week after that.”
