Watching Andy Murray lose on Centre Court last week, it was easy to get lost in nostalgia. 10 years ago to the date that he won Wimbledon for the first time on that famous sunburnt afternoon, he instead found himself forlorn and doubting, head hanging low in despondent acknowledgment of a battle lost that he once would have won. That’s the easy part to say though, isn’t it? Easy to excuse this defeat as yet another example of the clock having its way with us all. Everything else is getting harder.
Murray has this way of making us give a damn about him even if we’ve long ago lost faith in his chances to actually win the whole thing again. His ability is still there, hidden beneath a body ached and pained into submission. Imprisoned in metal, it peers out at the world in spotted moments of sunlight beaming through branches high with clouds passing above, now and then scorching, more-often-than-not simmering in hot-shot clips that still has us wondering how a forever December cold town in Scotland could have birthed such ferociousness? Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us. Grit breathes with its ugly talent of survival. It’s doesn’t quit. It hangs in there. That’s Murray.
Following this loss though, the sand felt worn away slightly. No finger-holds felt promised as he was questioned on his motivations to continue.
“I don’t know right now.”
This has been a theme of his career, an uncertainty that spins on a dial almost week-to-week. From “when will you win Wimbledon?!” right the way on through to “is this your last Wimbledon?!” It’s annoying and unhealthy, mentally taxing in its persistence to crack the shell of a man determined. It’ll split him open if he lets it but he’s experienced and so he refuses, slapping plasters over ever-growing grazes that peel his skin back and maroon his arms. He’d drip red over courts long into the future if he thought it worth it.
What’s refreshing about Murray is that he’s no pretender. He’ll show us his bruises and tell us the story behind each of them. He changes his mind, most obviously evidenced in his retirement-oh-not-so-fast announcement at the Australian Open back in 2019. He feels disappointment and lets us in on it, refusing to smoke-and-mirror. He plays a game for his work, he need not bother here. And so when he says he’s uncertain on what’s to come, I believe him. It makes him all the more real because we’ve all had our belief in ourselves rocked before and asked with our quiet inward voices if there’s even a point in trying to claw it back?
It’s fun to get lost in the past of a grizzled veteran trying to reclaim a portion of what he had. Murray’s tale winds us through failure and superstardom and dips its toes through pieces of his heart as its pumped past its breaking point far too many times. He’s broken us a little too, left us unreasonable and unruly and wanting of more when he’s already given us most. Alien expectations of a man dusted.
This is what we subject our aged greats to, these questions as to when they’re wrapping it up as though they’re embarrassments to us now they can’t keep to the standard. We try to usher them off-stage, celebrate their past while glancing from their present. They can no longer provide and so we no longer care, keen to hand the walking stick over as soon as they say the word. We ruin their legacies for them.
Murray’s cried far too many tears for him to let this all go without an absolute war. Indeed, far too many for him to let us take it all from him. I don’t know him but I feel like I do and for what that’s worth (and I know that’s not much), I think that he’ll work out in the next few weeks that the highs these days maybe shorter but these ones have loop-de-loops.
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Popcorn Tennis 
Brilliant Rhetoric, research and writing.. OK when are you publishing your First Book NIgel?
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