Andy
Murray's retirement from professional tennis will leave his older brother Jamie
Murray alone on the ATP Tour. The 3-time Grand Slam champion announced he will
likely play until the end of the European summer, though he hasn't given a
definitive date for his departure from the courts.
This will
be particularly special for his brother Jamie, as they have shared nearly 20
years on the Tour together. The 38-year-old tennis player still hopes to remain
active for a while, despite taking on a new role as the director of the Queens
Club Championship.
“It’ll
be strange not to have him on the Tour”
The elder
Murray is currently at the French Open, participating in the main draw of
doubles alongside Australian Michael Venus. They entered as the 13th seed and
debuted with a win against the Spanish duo of Pedro Martínez and Jaume Munar.
After the victory, Murray commented on what his brother’s absence on the tour
will mean.
"That
will be weird to not have him there," he said. "I mean obviously it’s
a fairly unique situation to have your brother doing the same job as you at a
high-level sport and travelling the world together."
"That
is a nice thing, even if, you know, we don’t spend loads of time together at
the events just because schedules and stuff can be very different," the
former doubles world No. 1 added.
"But
you know that in the background you’ve always got someone from your family
there, which is nice even if you’re not accessing it all the time. When he does
stop, whenever that is, it’ll be strange not to have him on the tour. Because
we’ve been doing the same thing for like 20 years basically. It’ll be a big
miss."
![Copyright ProShots 4030597](https://r.testifier.nl/Acbs8526SDKI/resizing_type:fit/watermark:Picture%3A%20Proshots/width:1280/plain/https://s3-newsifier.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/tennisuptodate.com/images/images/Copyright-ProShots-4030597.jpg@webp)
Andy Murray and Jamie Murray playing doubles together in Davis Cup
"One
because he’s been through a lot more physically than I have. And for me, like,
I need to keep playing," he laughed, hinting at the difference in their
career earnings. "He doesn’t need to keep playing. And obviously in
doubles you can play longer as well."
"I
think he’ll be happy to get home and start practicing on grass for hopefully a
good season for him. I think the last few days kind of killed a lot of people’s
motivation to be around here, you know," he continued.
"Obviously
he took a wildcard as well, so he obviously wanted to go out today and put in a
good performance and stuff. I’m sure for a lot of guys it would’ve been easy to
pull out or whatever, but he wanted to do that for those reasons and have a good
tournament."