At times during Mahut and Isner’s epic, never-ending tennis marathon, it was difficult to remember that something called Wimbledon continued to unfold around them. The American’s gruelling win was intense, emotional viewing-truly riveting-but in the bigger picture of the world’s premier tennis tournament it was all a bit pointless.
Neither player was going to trouble the trophy engraver this year, which will probably be of minimal consolation to Mahut if he ever finds the will to pick up a racket again. Plucky underdogs are likely to be demolished in depressing fashion, in a men’s draw which is packed with quality players. The last few years have been something of a golden age for men’s tennis and Wimbledon 2010 may be its culmination. Her Majesty certainly picked a good time to visit for the first time in 30 years.
Unfortunately for Liz she will have seen very little of her own subjects in action as she sauntered regally around the grounds. British tennis has been more than a little sub-standard for a long time now. Our best players have either been foreign born, such as the Canadian Greg Rusedski or our Aussie teen prodigy Laura Robson, or trained overseas, such as Andy Murray who emigrated to Spain to find decent coaching. On the female front Britain has not had a serious contender in living memory and the LTA’s policy for producing decent male players seems to mimic the tagline from Highlander, namely, ‘There can be only one’.
The world apparently can only contain one British tennis superstar, one man who annually has to carry the hopes of, and ultimately disappoint, the most demanding of nations. Thankfully for us, our current number one is actually quite good. Best to say it quietly but Andy Murray may be the best chance of a British Wimbledon champion in quite a while.
To win though he’ll have to run a gauntlet which consists of some of the best players ever. Federer is not quite the player he once was, but he is still Federer. It has been suggested by commentators that he has lost some of the fleet-footedness of his younger years, and recently his staggering record of reaching 23 consecutive semi-finals ended on the red clay of the French Open. On his day though he resembles a machine designed specifically to play flawless, precision tennis, and he has won so many tennis titles it must be a little confusing for him when he occasionally does not get to take home a trophy.
His arch-nemesis Nadal has the advantage of being younger and ridiculously honed physically. He will also be extremely motivated, having missed the last Wimbledon, and much of the last 18 months, through injury. Even if neither of these two tennis legends wins, an event which hasn’t happened since 2002, the rest of the competition is not too shabby. Any of Novak Djokovic, Andy Roddick, Robin Soderling, or even former champion Lleyton Hewitt, to name but a few, could throw a spanner in Andy’s works.
Murray however does have one advantage over all the others: he is on home turf, and the crowd are on his side. At least that is the situation on paper. Murray, a proud Scot, may not feel quite as at home on an English court as Henman did. Nor will he ever enjoy the unadulterated adulation that Tiger Tim enjoyed. There is something about Murray that has not always endeared him to the English public.
Clearly his Scottishness is a problem for some, but his mannerisms are not instantly loveable either. He is a dour man who rarely smiles, and constantly wears an expression as if he has been locked in a cell all day with only a copy of Nouse for company. His fierce desire to win may lose him friends too, and is at odds with the strawberries-and-cream, middle-class reservation that, even in 2010, is still characteristic of Wimbledon and the competition’s spectators. It’s not uncommon to see him lose his cool with an umpire and throw a tantrum if things don’t go his way.
Champions are not usually likeable people though. Michael Schumacher, Alex Ferguson and Shane Warne all had their critics, largely because their drive to win occasionally led them to stretch the rules to the limits. Murray has a similar single-mindedness, a determined focus, an unattractive disregard for anything else but the win. In the light of recent failures for the English football team, and Henman’s appealing but ultimately excessive niceness, perhaps it is Murray’s unquenchable thirst for victory, a very un-English character trait, that has prevented him from achieving the same level of admiration that timid Tim did.
This won’t bother Murray one bit, and he is not at Wimbledon to win friends. His disappointment at losing the Australian Open final in January was there for all to see, and after two Grand Slam final defeats Murray is desperate to jump over that last hurdle and win his first Grand Slam. Henman Hill may never truly be Murray Mount, but if Andy can do what Tim never did and win Wimbledon, he will be eternally thankful that he traded some popularity for success.