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. It was disjointed and lacked the ebb and flow of the greatest games.
Djokovich, charming as ever, was slightly under par, but he is such a gent he would never say anything even if he’d been up all night with gastroenteritis, had dislocated his shoulder and been chucked by his girlfriend. ‘The better man won, well played Andy,’ he would say — and indeed he did.
This was an extraordinary victory for Murray, but not at all unexpected. He is imperiously the best player in the world (bar one). In the last four Grand Slams he has entered, he has appeared in the final of all of them, winning two. He has transformed his body, and now, thanks to Ivan Lendl, his mind. In the end nothing would stand in his way. To me, Murray is one of the two greatest sportsmen Britain has ever produced, the other being Sir Roger Bannister.
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