“I guess with my tennis it’s always been a bit of a struggle,” Andy Murray told Sue Barker after losing a first-round doubles match at Wimbledon this evening, an understatement that made many fans, myself included, chuckle through our tears. Unless he decides otherwise in the coming days or weeks, it’s not a wrap on his career just yet: he’s still in the mixed-doubles draw with Emma Raducanu and hopes to play his final competitive match at the upcoming Paris Olympics.
Unfit for play in singles following a recent spinal cyst surgery, Murray teamed up with his brother, Jamie, an accomplished doubles specialist, for the night session on Centre Court, which hadn’t hosted a first-round doubles match in 29 years. After they came up short in two close sets, Barker made a surprise appearance to host his formal Wimbledon sendoff. We were treated first to the usual career retrospective, an emotionally charged affair with the requisite contributions from Venus Williams and the rest of the Big Four, and that’s when my crying commenced.
Next came a lengthy on-court interview as a row of current and former players — among them Novak Djokovic, Iga Świątek, Holger Rune, John McEnroe, Tim Henman, Conchita Martínez and Martina Navratilova — stood solemnly in the background to pay their respects. No member of the Big Four suffered more than Murray, who tortured himself mentally even when physically healthy; there were many times in his career when his blistering anger made it difficult to watch his matches. It’s one of the reasons I found him so relatable, even when I wished he’d stop shouting at himself (or at his box).
His style of play was sometimes grueling, especially early in his career, and he paid the price for it later with injuries, including a lengthy hip ordeal that would’ve ended most players’ careers. Murray’s tenacity is the stuff of Wimbledon legend, but he fought just as valiantly during these last few years of struggles, determined to push himself back to the top so he could leave when he wanted to, not when injuries dictated his departure.* It didn’t work out that way, which choked him up during his conversation with Barker; even after giving it everything he had (and then some), he still wished he could’ve done more.
Though Murray was second only to Federer in wearing his heart on his sleeve, he was appropriately guarded about sensitive topics a prying press might attempt to sensationalize. He rarely spoke of the Dunblane school massacre that he and his brother survived, and he often minimized the pain that plagued him for the second half of his career. He trafficked instead in anger and, more charmingly, dry humor and sarcasm. An outspoken critic of sexism and homophobia (and not coincidentally, the ATP’s foremost champion of women’s tennis), he was coached first by his mother, Judy, and later hired the openly lesbian Amelie Mauresmo.
That his health issues sometimes strayed into the embarrassing — most notably when he had, for lack of a better term, ass shingles, or when he was groggy from anesthesia and accidentally shared a revealing x-ray on Instagram — made me love him all the more: aside from the insanely exceptional athletic talent, he was much like the rest of us. I was already soppy about Murray not too long ago and explained my fondness for his wife, Kim Sears, then; there’s not much I could add to this that wasn’t already covered there.** Let’s finish, then, with Murray’s tribute to her, which reminded me of an early date with Crankenstein in which I passed out, concussed myself and vomited, none of which scared her away.
We met the first time when we were 18 years old. Kim’s dad is a tennis coach and we met over in New York for the first time, went out for dinner there at the US Open. And I choked a little bit the first time we went out and I walked her home to her hotel and I asked her for her email address. [Laughs] I don’t think that’s a normal thing to do. And she came along to actually watch my — the first match she came to watch of me live was at the US Open, and I vomited twice in that match, once right in front of where she was sitting. I then stood up and vomited on my opponent’s racquet bag. And she still seemed to like me, so I knew she was a keeper after that.
— Andy Murray, Wimbledon 2024
* Here’s his runner-up speech in 2012 and celebration after winning in 2013.
** There were some missing highlights I would’ve included in his retrospective, like telling Fognini to shut up and calling out Tsitsipas for his bathroom break gamesmanship. Neither were pivotal moments in his career, but those are bucket-list items for most tennis fans.