As a 36-year-old Andy Murray gets ready to compete in singles at Wimbledon for a 15th time in his storied career, his mother Judy has made one plea: Enough with all the retirement talk and just let him play.
The two-time Wimbledon winner recently captured back-to-back Challenger titles on grass in the build-up to these Championships and has returned to the world’s top-40 for the first time since 2018.
A former world No1 and three-time Grand Slam champion, Murray’s career was rocked by a hip injury in 2017, which required multiple surgeries, including a hip resurfacing procedure that could have ended his spell as a professional tennis player.
The Scot has somehow found a way to continue competing with a metal hip and arrives at SW19 ranked 39 in the world and feeling confident on the grass.
He recently was asked by Sky Sports if this was going to be his final Wimbledon and Murray said he hoped it wasn’t, and feels he can remain competitive for another couple of years.
Speaking to The National at the WTA’s 50th anniversary celebration event in London on Friday, Judy Murray urged people to stop focusing on her son’s retirement date and instead appreciate him while he is still around.
“I think the fact that he’s still competing, still playing – I mean when he got the hip injury in 2017 he was No1 in the world, he was playing the best tennis of his life and just so unlucky because it took a long time for him to find the right way to address that injury and then to recover from it, rehab from it, took a long, long time,” said Judy.
“And I think the fact that he’s still playing shows his passion for the game, his love of competition and yeah… let’s just let him play for as long as he wants to play and stop talking about when he’s going to retire. Just leave him to do what he does best.”
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Andy Murray’s first Wimbledon triumph – a historic success that saw him end Britain’s 77-year wait for a home men’s singles champion at the All England Club.
Murray had suffered a heartbreaking defeat to Roger Federer in the Wimbledon final 12 months earlier, before avenging that defeat to the Swiss a few weeks later in the London 2012 Olympics final, which was held at the same venue. He clinched his maiden Grand Slam title at the US Open that summer before securing the Wimbledon crown the following year.
Reflecting on her son’s momentous victory, Judy said: “I think the biggest thing for me, from Andy winning in 2013, the overriding emotion for me was relief.
“I think when you’re a British player and it’s your home Slam and the bulk of the country are watching it and think that the whole tennis world revolves around Wimbledon. And I think because Andy had lost in the final the year before to Federer and how devastated he was with that and how long it took to get him out of that slump.
“And thankfully the Olympics came along that year very quickly, same venue, different feel because it was a team competition, different type of crowd, and he managed to win that, I think that was a big thing.
“But I think having witnessed the devastation for him of losing in the final, I think when he got to the final in 2013, for me it was like, ‘Oh please don’t let it happen again’. Because you never know when you’re going to get that chance to be in a final. Very few male players over the last 20 years have been in a final. It’s been dominated by a small number of players.”
Only 12 players have featured in a Wimbledon final since 2003, with Roger Federer collecting eight trophies at the Championships within that stretch, Novak Djokovic picking up seven, and Murray and Rafael Nadal winning two each.
“I think I watched that match in a complete fog,” continued Judy, recalling Andy’s 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 victory over Djokovic in the 2013 Wimbledon final.
“And normally I can watch and I remember all the break points, all the switches of momentum, all the bad calls, all the distractions from the crowd – I normally remember everything, that’s my coach’s hat rather than my parent hat. And I don’t remember anything about that match until 40-0 when he had the three match points, and then it was deuce, and then it was a net cord and advantage to Novak and I said, ‘Please don’t let this happen again’.
“And I remember I put my hand over my mouth, because often the lipreaders are on you, and I won’t tell you what I was saying into my hand but I could hear my heart thumping and that game was so long, that final game.
“And when he eventually got it, it was complete and utter relief for me, on his behalf. An incredible achievement.”
Judy, who is an experienced coach and former Billie Jean King Cup captain for Team GB, has two Wimbledon champions in her family with her older son Jamie lifting the mixed doubles titles in 2007 and 2017.
“We come from a country – Scotland - that has no track record of success in tennis, it’s a minority sport in our country, we have very poor facilities, we still do unfortunately, but nobody would have predicted that a Scottish player would win the singles title at Wimbledon. And of course Jamie won the mixed a few years before and that may have provided a big incentive for Andy, because big brother did it first,” she added.
Unseeded Murray has been drawn to face fellow Brit Ryan Peniston in the opening round of Wimbledon on Tuesday, with the winner of that match earning a showdown against former US Open champion Dominic Thiem or No5 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in round two.
