Andy Murray Joins the Immortals in A Golden Age of Tennis

Dunblane yesterday evening and, an hour after Andy Murray has won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, the streets are still thronged with cheerful revellers. Smiles and saltires abound. Locals and visitors cluster for photographs around the golden letterbox commemorating Murray’s Olympic triumph last year. Journalists have been despatched to pen colour pieces from Murray’s home town. On the Stirling road two young girls, one sporting a saltire as a kind of sari, hold up a poster of the local hero; every passing car honks its horn in celebratory salutation. The boy has done it. Not bad, not bad at all.

This morning, acres of newsprint are devoted to Murray’s victory. It is, as you might have heard, the first time in 77 years that a British man has won Wimbledon. Murray, in fact, is the first Briton to do so while wearing short trousers. Giddy stuff. There is, indeed, a palpable sense of pinch-me-has-this-really-happened?

But the most significant feature of Murray’s achievement is that it is not so very surprising at all.