Murray waves farewell to professional tennis with typical tenacity in Olympics doubles defeat
The British duo were beaten 6-2, 6-4 by Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul on an emotional night inside Court Suzanne-Lenglen
Ryan Browne/Shutterstock/SIPA
19 years and two months after he made his tour debut, one of Great Britain’s finest ever athletes has played his final point on a professional match court.
Andy Murray exited tennis alongside fellow countryman Dan Evans in the quarter-finals of the Olympic Games in a one-sided but ultimately courageous defeat to Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul, going down 6-2, 6-4 to the American pair on a night of raw emotion inside Court Suzanne-Lenglen.
The British duo have known from the beginning of their Olympics adventure that defeat would mark the end of Murray’s extraordinary career.
After two scarcely believable acts of escapism in the first two rounds, tonight proved a step too far as they found themselves up against supreme quality in Fritz and Paul.
But Murray was never going gently into that good night.
For five-and-a-half years now, since hip resurfacing surgery in 2019, he has raged – quite literally – against the dying of the light.
It was always going to be the case that a player defined by his tenacity, his indomitable spirit and his sheer force of will, would meet the end with a blazing roar of defiance rather than a nodding acceptance.
So it was again tonight, as Evans and Murray put on one last great act of resistance in the face of the inevitable.
american duet too good for evans and murray
After a one-sided first set in which the American pair raced into a 4-0 lead, eventually sealing it 6-2 despite a late break by the Brits, the second provided all the theatre. There was already an air of inevitability once the first set had been lost, and that was only compounded when Fritz and Paul then rapidly moved into a 5-2, double-break lead once again.
When serving for the match, however, Murray and Evans burst into incredible last-gasp action yet again. Saving match point, they broke serve on their fourth break point after a mammoth game before holding serve to move to 5-4.
Yet as the Americans stepped to the baseline to serve for the match for a second time, there was an odd sense that this time, the story had come to its natural conclusion.
Rather than the yearning for one final epic comeback to dwarf all previous comebacks, there was instead the oddly serene, albeit sad, feeling that this was a wonderful sporting act that had played its final encore.
Fritz and Paul duly served out a fine, deserved win and the career of Britain’s greatest modern tennis player came to an end.
andy murray – an athlete like no other
It is difficult to put into words quite what Murray has given both to tennis and to British sport. Since 2006, he has epitomised everything it is to be a world-class athlete. He has defined sport in the United Kingdom and beyond for much of his twenty years on tour.
In many ways, every match of the great Scot’s career has been a microcosm of his career itself. Whenever the finish line was in sight, Murray viscerally rejected the notion of defeat. There are many within tennis who have far outstripped his achievements in terms of titles. But there is no one who fights to the death like this 37-year-old Scot has done since he was just 17.
That is why Murray has recovered from more two-set deficits than any player in history. It is why he returned to elite-level tennis after a hip resurfacing procedure that many medical experts thought impossible to come back from. It is for this reason that he has fought so valiantly over the past five years to continue his wonderful career, often – and more frequently in recent months – against a rising tide of frankly bizarre criticism for doing so.
Murray is never finished until the final point has been won or lost. He is never done until everything has been left on the court, until every avenue for victory or recovery has been explored and until a match is mathematically concluded.
Andy Murray’s endless tenacity, his enduring adoration for the sport of tennis and his unwavering willingness to wear his heart on his sleeve shall never be replicated by another player.
Put simply, he will be sorely, dearly missed.
