Spectator sport: Why Andy Murray may be the greatest sportsman Britain has produced

There’s nothing we old folk like more than a chat about how poorly all our friends and acquaintances are. This is because, as anyone who understands the complex workings of the universe knows, there is only a certain amount of ill health to go round and the more it lands on someone else, the better our chances of dodging a bullet. It’s the same with tennis: there’s only a certain number of classic matches available for any one tournament.

At this year’s Wimbledon the tennis gods poured all the juice into the wondrous Djokovich/Del Potro semi-final, which was one of most thrilling, athletic and noble sporting contests I have ever seen. Its full magnificence was slightly lost in the euphoria over Murray’s subsequent passage to the final with victory over the hulking Jerzy boy. But the tennis deities are implacable, which meant that the final, epochal and historic as it was, could never be a great match.