Arrived in Paris for my last ever tennis tournament @Olympics Competing for 🇬🇧 have been by far the most memorable weeks of my career and I’m extremely proud to get do it one final time!
ANALYSIS: A look at Andy Murray's glittering career as retirement confirmed
ATPTuesday, 23 July 2024 at 15:02
Sir Andy Murray is one of the biggest names in tennis today, and for very good reason. For the past 15 or so years, Murray has been one of the best players in the world and arguably the best British tennis player in history. You have to approach it from that angle because he played in the strongest era of tennis and carved out an incredible career for himself.
His Wimbledon win might just be one of the most iconic moments ever in British sports because it’s the first time a Brit won in a very long time. He would repeat that achievement once more and add a US Open to his tally for a total of 3 Grand Slam trophies. Now you might think that it’s not much, and it’s really not when you remember that Stan Wawrinka has 3 Grand Slam trophies, but Murray is a far better player.
His list of achievements is far longer than that of Wawrinka, and all the injuries and surgeries he’s been able to overcome only adds to his legacy. Even so, he’s only human, and as every human, he’s got limitations that ultimately have caught up with him. This year hasn’t been very good in terms of results. He struggled with some physical problems in recent weeks and has generally been unable to win many matches.
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His first win of the year came in Doha, while his first back-to-back win happened only in Miami. That Miami run was, in many ways, his best tennis this year, but unfortunately, it was stopped by an injury. We’ve simply come to a point in his career where his body can’t really hold up anymore, at least not with the brutal demands that players a decade younger than him also struggle with.
His tennis has also suffered because, at his peak, the movement was so crucial to what Murray was doing on the court. If he didn’t have his movement on point, then he’d struggle because he was never the most devastating hitter. He was a smart player who wore you down and waited for his chance to pounce. After his multiple surgeries, the movement wasn’t the same. He talked about it frequently and how frustrating it was because he felt like his tennis was good enough, but the movement was never on point again.
The body stuff became particularly apparent as we got closer to Wimbledon in recent weeks. His beloved Wimbledon was supposed to be a celebration of everything he’s done in his career so far. But it wasn’t. The Brit injured his back badly at the Cinch Championship two weeks before Wimbledon. He needed surgery, which he underwent, but it severely limited what he could do on the tennis court. He had to withdraw from the singles at Wimbledon, which was devastating.
This was supposed to be the farewell, the perfect send-off, but it didn’t end up being that. It ended up being a pretty emotional send-off in the doubles with his brother Jamie by his side. He said that he was never searching for that perfect ending, but it was quite disappointing that it unfolded that way. If that wasn’t enough, Emma Raducanu pulling out of their mixed doubles certainly added insult to injury because that’s how his chapter at Wimbledon ended.
Andy Murray's retirement end point makes sense in context of his career.
It wasn’t perfect. It was far from perfect, but it was actually brutally fitting. That’s really what you kind of take away from that. It was like his career, a struggle but somehow still a success. The Brit was celebrated and showed great respect for the legacy he left at Wimbledon, and he deserved it. So, was it the end? Did his career finish there? No, it wasn’t because the end will come in a few days. Murray announced on social media that the 2024 Paris Olympics will be the final tennis event he’ll ever play.
It's an interesting choice for Murray, but also one that makes sense. He just came off of a back injury, and these past weeks after Wimbledon likely helped him recover from that surgery fully. He’s certainly going to be more potent in Paris than he was in London, which is one of the reasons why he’s going to play at the event. Another reason, and this is likely the bigger reason, is that no player in modern tennis has left a bigger mark on the Olympic Games than Andy Murray. Rafael Nadal, for example, won two gold medals at the games, but only one of those was in singles. The other was in doubles.
Andy Murray has won two gold medals in singles (2012, 2016), and that’s an incredible achievement. He also won a silver medal in the mixed doubles event in 2012, so his legacy at the Olympic Games is just huge. Nobody outperformed him at the games in recent memory, so saying goodbye to the sport at that event does seem oddly fitting.
As poetic as a Wimbledon farewell would be, an Olmypic one probably makes even more sense. It’s why Mats Wilander predicted months ago that Murray was going to say goodbye to tennis at the Olympics - it just makes too much sense, and so it will be.
The confirmation came today from the man himself, and that’s going to be it from him. He wrote simply on his social media as a preview for the Olympic Games that it would be his final tournament. Fairly poetic for a man who has let his tennis do the talking over any grand words over the years.
It’s a very bittersweet moment because he’s deserved a proper send-off in retriement. He gave the sport a lot, too much in many ways, and now it’s time to finally rest up. And after all, this is not a definite goodbye from the sport. He’s going to be back in one way or another, even if it's only some exhibition here and there. Sir Andy Murray will ultimately never be far away from tennis because there is no tennis without Andy Murray especially in Great Britain where they will now ponder, what is next?
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