Who said that Andy Murray, former world number 1, had a pig’s character? When some, bruised by an elimination, would have rushed towards the exit tunnel without stopping, he, the false villain, agrees to sign autographs on a cap, a giant ball or a notebook.
That’s because he now has all the time in the world on this Suzanne-Lenglen court, which, surprisingly, is only half full for the farewell of a tennis legend: the 37-year-old Scot with the metal hip is officially retired. As he had announced before the start of the Olympic tournament at the Roland-Garros stadium, the Paris Olympics were his ultimate challenge.
“It’s not the perfect ending but I feel good”
Beaten (2-6, 4-6) in doubles by an American duo in the quarter-finals alongside his compatriot Daniel Evans, the Olympic champion in 2012 and 2016 left the arena after raising his arms to the sky and saying “goodbye” with his hands. History will remember that for his last match he was not officiating on his blessed grass but on his hated surface. “Playing on clay makes me hate tennis,” he once confessed.
But this Thursday at 9:37 p.m., the time of his last losing shot, the veteran who ends his career ranked 121st in the world, forgets his allergy to Parisian ochre. He is cheered by his fans wrapped in a Union Jack flag. He has no regrets: if he offered the first point of the match by caressing the ball on the volley, he then regularly sent it into the net or behind the lines. The Taylor Fritz-Tommy Paul pair was unstoppable.
The Fritz-Paul pair was too strong for the British. SUSA / Icon Sport
There was no third miracle for the 2013 Wimbledon winner seventy-seven years after the legend Fred Perry. Since the beginning of the tournament, he had been chaining together crazy scenarios and miraculous victories with his comrade, saving five match points in the first round and two more in the next that would make him crack and burst into tears.
No sobs this time for this last dance that allows him to take his final bow. Inseparable from his ankle guards that make his sneakers look like hiking boots, he arrives in the mixed zone looking calm. An attitude confirmed by his words. “Quarter-final, it’s not the perfect ending but I feel good, I knew this moment was coming, I was ready, I’m happy to have finished like this”, he says positively, “proud” of his career.
Fighting spirit
A few minutes earlier, his friend and rival, the Serbian Novak Djokovic, born a week later than him in May 1987, saluted his “fighting spirit” just after his qualification for the singles semi-final.
Andy Murray has become, through his success, the idol of a Kingdom that has learned to adore him after having, for a good part of them, taken a dislike to him when, in 2006, the young Scot wished defeat on the England football team. “It was a long time ago, it was a joke, the statute of limitations has expired,” excuses Carolyn, a London fan with a front row seat on the Suzanne-Lenglen court alongside her son Sam, 15, and his octogenarian parents in wheelchairs.
For a decade, he was part of the “Big 4” with the three other fantastics, the already retired Swiss Roger Federer, the Spaniard Rafael Nadal who may have played his last match on the center court on Wednesday and Novak Djokovic. In his game, he did not have the flamboyance of the other sacred monsters. “But he was the one who never gave up,” praises Carolyn, the long-time fan who saw her idol triumph twice in the stands at Wimbledon, in 2013 and 2016.
Incorrigible grumbler on the court, endearing off it
Already in 2019, eaten away by injuries and pain in his hip, which had been patched up by two operations, he announced that he was ending his career, before finally backtracking and gradually returning, without ever regaining his best level.
On the circuit, Andy Murray has always been a unique athlete. On the court, he spent his time grumbling, with a sullen face, never satisfied even when everything was going well for him, not really a fan of British phlegm. Off the court, he is another man, approachable, skillfully handling irony and British humor, always blunt in his statements. Two very different faces therefore, like his sponge wrists this Thursday evening, red on the left, black on the right.
Presented as the most feminist player on the ATP Tour, at a good school alongside his mother Judy, ex-captain of the British Fed Cup team, he revolutionized the tennis world by recruiting the French Amélie Mauresmo as coach between 2014 and 2016. The “Murraysmo” duo was, at the beginning of the adventure, the target of much criticism in the community, some even believing that it was “a joke”. On these networks, he never stopped defending the cause of the champions, putting back in place all those who gave in to sexist excesses.
It was no surprise that, in the stands on Thursday evening, the gentleman was applauded by the American Billie Jean King, 80 years old, a tennis legend with twelve Grand Slam titles also known for her fight for gender equality and the recognition of women’s sport.
At 10:35 p.m., in torrential rain, the Briton slips out of the mixed zone and heads for the locker rooms. It doesn’t matter if he’s floating, he gives selfies to the soaking wet fans. “Sir Andy”, knighted in 2019 by Prince Charles who was not yet “King”, is a real king.
