Here he comes then, the world No 156. Some plucky old trier from up north of the Scottish border by the name of Andy Murray. The last time he was ranked so low was more than a decade ago, way back in 2005, the year he first turned pro. He has been out of tennis for the best part of a year now, since he lost against Sam Querrey in the quarter‑finals of Wimbledon last year. He spent most of that time struggling with the hip injury that he finally had fixed in January. He has had a lot of false dawns since, the last of them in Rosmalen just a couple of weeks ago. Now here he was, at last, back on Centre Court at Queen’s Club.
Of course he received a standing ovation, a full chorus of hoots and claps and hollers and cheers. After that everyone settled into a sort of uneasy silence, unsure exactly what to expect from him. Murray has won this title five times and more than anything else the crowd just wanted one more chance to see him compete. Whether he would manage even to do that much was not clear. He had said that this first match back was about “seeing where my game’s at”. He is 31, and his game has a year’s worth of rust on it, then there is the business of his hip and how the surgery would affect his all‑court game.
It was a tough draw, too. Up against his great mate Nick Kyrgios, who had played so brilliantly against Roger Federer in the semi-finals at Stuttgart last Saturday. In the circumstances, plenty believed Murray would do well even to take the match to a third set, let alone win it. There were nerves, then, as he bounced the ball up and down, thump, thump, thump, before his very first serve. Fault. So he started over again. This time he shied away from the toss. Then, third time around, he landed one. And he was off and away for another grass-court season.
Kyrgios made hay in those early exchanges. Murray’s movement was fine, even if he did not quite have that old elastic snap back from the tramlines, but his game looked a little off the pace.
He was scrapping to fight off break points while Kyrgios ran through his repertoire of trick shots, turning a pirouette before he hit a smash, and whacking balls back from between his legs. Sometimes even the ’tweeners landed in. And then, midway through that first set everything started to change. Murray settled, and Kyrgios started to drift.
At 2-2 in the first set, Murray brushed off two break points to hold serve, then broke Kyrgios in the next game, at the third attempt. And all of a sudden, there was a real urgency to the match. Those old, desperate shouts of “Come on Andy!” started to ring around the stands and Murray was muttering imprecations and exhortations under his breath, berating himself after the bad shots, and pumping his fist and shouting after the good ones.
These all felt like familiar and reassuring signs that another English summer is here, like the first swallows and strawberries.
It turned into a patchy affair, the standard up and down from one rally to the next. But for Murray, the main thing was surely just that he kept plugging away through the best part of three hours’ play. He did hold his hand to his back a couple of times late in the match, and no doubt his body will be plenty stiff and his limbs mighty sore, on Wednesday morning. But still. There was an idea that injury could even end his career but he is still here. He is, after all, a tough and stubborn a player as ever held a racket. Wimbledon will surely come too soon. But there was enough there in this first match back to suggest that he is not done yet.
The caveat is that Kyrgios’s interest seemed to ebb and flow, as it so often does. At 23, he still treats his enormous talent in a way that must make people older than he is want to plead with him to just try applying himself. Murray has never done anything but in his glittering career.
He leaves it all on court, has spent every last part of himself to the endeavour. And at 31, even after the year he has had, it seems he still has more to give. There s life in the old Scot yet.
