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.
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.
Will we see his like again? In all likelihood, we might not even see him again, or for much longer, anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What’s he really like? People ask. They have their preconceived notions, of course: grumpy, odd, irascible, etc. Or, “a bit strange”, as he told Laura Robson recently. You’d think he’s the Van Morrison of tennis, so entrenched are these opinions.
Certainly, he’s more complex and interesting than imagined, a sackful of contradictions. There are few tougher fighters on court, and nobody softer away from the fury of competition. He has been known to be tight with money (we had a long chat once about air miles), and extraordinarily generous.
Murray is sentimental and caring to the extent that no amount of acting could deliver. He dislikes artifice. And, as he has matured, he has become more willing to share his views on everything from feminism to the plight of boat people to Scottish independence.
Famously teetotal, he’s even shared a drink or two with the travelling pack of British tennis writers. After he won his second Wimbledon title, in 2016, he invited a ragged bunch of seasoned topers to a West End nightclub, where the stories flowed as freely as the beer, wine and vodka cocktails.
There were more than a few sore heads at the press conference the following day, one of them Murray’s.
As his metal hip and various other patched-up bits of his frame began to scream at him, Murray’s results dived. Yet there was no slackening in commitment, comebacks more regular than titles.
I once had a notional bet with him that he’d retire before I did. He won, as he so often did. Those close to him are diplomatically in the dark about his intentions, or setting an exit date for the best player we’ve had since Fred Perry.
Emma Raducanu, who has had to manage her own serial injury hell, said the other day: “I know him a little bit and he loves tennis, he loves the sport, the challenges that come with it. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks or says about him. He just loves doing what he does. For him finally giving up tennis, I just don’t see it [giggling]. I’d be happy if he played for a very long time to come.”
My bet (another one he’ll probably prove wrong) is this will be his farewell season. If it is, it will hurt him more than any of the many surgeries he has endured.
As it stands, the All England Club has its collective silver spoon hovering over a punnet of the finest tennis fruit available, but not sure if it will be served with its familiar embellishment.
