If winning Grand Slam tennis tournaments was easy, anybody could do it. Andy Murray has contributed mightily to the public’s understanding of just how much work play can be at the elite level.
Murray won three major titles during a career, apparently ended now because of a chronic hip injury, that has been enormously successful by any standard. More to the point: His hardly was a primrose path.
He spent the first eight years of his professional career, and his first 27 major-tournament appearances, gnawing at the chains of great expectations. After immediately establishing himself as a member of the sport’s Fab Four—consistently ranked alongside Federer, Nadal and Djokovic—Murray repeatedly faced the insistent question (especially from the clamorous British press) of “When?”
When would he at last win the Big One? His early promise—the 2004 U.S. Open junior title at 17—had raised the likelihood that he would be the first British man to win a major since 1936, and his repeated close-but-no-cigar finishes somehow were seen as a dereliction of duty.
He had arrived on the scene not long after a cartoon in the London press highlighted the irony of Great Britain’s distinction as the sport’s birthplace and host of the game’s oldest and most famous tournament, even as it continually failed to produce championship contenders. Wimbledon, the lampoon went, had become “a fortnight of glorious self-delusion about Britain’s status as a serious tennis nation.”
Britons’ mixed feelings about the Scottish-born Murray were summed up in a ditty by a fellow named Matt Harvey in 2010, when Harvey was hired as Wimbledon’s official poet laureate:
If he’s ever brattish/Or brutish or skittish
He’s Scottish.
But when he looks fittish/And his form is hottish
He’s British.
Later that summer, Murray entered the U.S. Open as the fittest, hottest player on tour, only to be upset in the third round. Under the usual post-match interrogation of how soon and how he intended to fulfill his enormous potential, he might have responded with a thoroughly reasonable snarl. Something along the lines of: “This isn’t easy, you know.”
But instead of telling the media vultures to go jump in a lake, Murray clarified what should have been obvious. “I have no idea whether I’ll win a Grand Slam or not,” he said. “You know, I want to. But if I never win one, then what? If I give a hundred percent, try my best, physically work as hard as I can, practice as much as I can, then that’s all I can do.
“It’s something I would love to do. I’ll give it my best shot.”
In such settings, Murray speaks in a flat monotone, almost mumbling, sounding a bit detached even when he is anything but. It’s a startling contrast to his on-court voice, fiery shouts of self-deprecation and a body language at maximum volume of annoyance in times of frustration.
Two years after that soul-baring, after four runner-up finishes in majors, he at last had a Slam trophy at the Open and was just as straightforward about his feelings. He admitted that mid-match of his four-hour, five-set victory over Djokovic, “You’re still questioning yourself and doubting yourself.”
He eventually won Wimbledon twice and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, but last week’s description of Murray by the U.K.’s Independent as “a human in the land of gods” was a fitting recognition that his successes were hardly pre-ordained. That, to get paid, he had punched the clock. And that he indeed is not immortal.
At 31—young in the population at large but pushing the expiration date for his physically demanding enterprise—Murray now is “meeting the little death,” as novelist John Updike once wrote, “that awaits all athletes.”
But how about this for a nice legacy? The occasional “love” in tennis need not mean one’s labors are lost.