End of an era: Jamie Murray on facing ATP Tour alone after Andy's retirement

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.

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."

"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."