Not this time - and now, not ever again.
On Thursday night here in Paris, the grand farewell finally ran out of great escapes, Andy Murray out of the Olympics and the professional game.
He and partner Dan Evans have given so much to the first week of these Games, their journey to this quarter-final an epic tale of resilience and late-night comebacks, of seven match-points saved, including five on the spin when it seemed it might be over before it had begun.
Naturally, we had all begun to wonder whether, in breach of all logic, this might actually be on, the British pair suddenly within one win of a guaranteed shot at a parting medal and seemingly with some higher force on side.
Instead, the fairytale was torn up by the high-class Americans, Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul, who with a 6-2 6-4 win move into the last-four.
And with that, the thing that’s been coming, for years, really, but with absolute certainty for the last month, had arrived, the end of the road for one of the greatest sportsmen - the most dogged warriors - the country has ever produced, the winner of three Grand Slams, two Olympic gold medals and one long, torturous battle against body and time.
An emotional farewell from Andy Murray 🥹
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 1, 2024
Thank you, Andy ❤
#Olympics #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/MO01RB7iyh
Every morning since being knocked out of Wimbledon a month ago, Murray has woken with a dodgy back and the unsettling burden that his next tennis match might be his last. This week, he has three times made the journey to Roland-Garros knowing he might not return.
For those of us with a watching brief, these repeat pilgrimages to Paris’s west have come to feel a little like dark tourism, each visit in anticipation of a glorious career’s dying act. Again, Murray and Evans were scheduled last on Suzanne-Lenglen, appointment viewing in what has become an appointment slot. For much of the evening, the roof had been closed, following a brief downpour on another otherwise scorching, stuffy day in the French capital.
It made a sweatbox of the indoor arena, the stands as Felix Auger-Aliassime edged Casper Ruud in the last-eight of the singles a sea of fluttering fold-out fans and the queues for the ice cream stalls on the concourse long. Blessedly, in the moments before the doubles were introduced, the roof was rolled back and the breeze let in.
Still, you did not envy Paul, who had already played in the hottest part of the afternoon against Carlos Alcaraz, pushing the Wimbledon champion hard but going down in straight sets. Fritz, meanwhile, had come through a marathon assignment on Wednesday, playing three matches across singles, mixed and men’s doubles in the space of nine hours.
The Brits, then, had a freshness edge. Neither American, mind you, has a metal hip. They started best, up a double-break in no time with Paul lethal at the net and up the line, the first set as good as gone.
Again, there were as more seats empty than employed but half-a-home crowd is better than a full house without skin in the game. Here, whether Brits, romantics or both, almost all were cheering one way whenever they had chance.
Which in truth, for a long time, was not all that often, the Brits unable to make any momentum stick. Evans took his frustration out on some flowers and earned pantomime boos from the horticulturally aware. When the chair umpire had to ask for quiet, it was only to stop a lone American from murdering the Star-Spangled Banner.
The Evans serve was broken, the Americans 4-1 up in the second and Britain on the brink. They had come from a set and a break down against the Japanese in their opening encounter, but this was an even greater ask.
Perhaps predictably, they broke back immediately, a here-we-go-again sliver false hope? Murray double-faulted - 5-2 to the US - and for the first time looked resigned, a well-earned, if not particularly wanted retirement now only a few hits away.
But still he found more, a forehead smash and yet another match point saved, another act of defiance from the art's master bringing fresh determination that it need not be the last. Some of the rallies that followed were comically long, games edging back and forth from deuce with advantages either way, as if something in the very fabric of tennis itself did not quite want this to end.
But at 9:38pm local, to a standing ovation and chants of "Andy! Andy! Andy!", at last it did.
