“First set, Andy Murray to serve”. And so began the final leg of the farewell tour. There is no ambiguity, no doubt that it must end here, the question only of how many more days and nights the great man might play.
Happily, this evening, the answer remains unknown, after Murray and partner Dan Evans staged an epic fightback to extend their run at these Olympic Games into the second round of the men’s doubles, not to mention prolong the career of the player who has twice claimed gold.
Down a set and a break to the Japanese pair of Kei Nishikori and Taro Daniel, in front of a two-thirds empty Court Suzanne-Lenglen, Murray’s final tournament as a professional appeared to be accelerating towards a horribly premature close.
Down 9-4 in the first-to-ten tiebreak, after levelling the match in a spirited second set, it had at least been dragged back to the fringes of consolation in the form of a fittingly heroic defeat.
Somehow, though, the British duo reeled off a ridiculous seven points without reply to keep the flame burning bright, another chapter of Murrayian defiance writ, and the possibility still open that it might not be the last.
“It’s probably up there,” Murray said, when asked where saving five match-points in a row ranked in a career punctuated by remarkable feats of escapology.
“The way that we were playing to that stage would have not suggested that we were likely to come back,” he added in blunt terms.
If Evans and Murray were unlikely victors until virtually the moment the deed was done, then at one stage earlier in the afternoon, as Evans lay sprawled on the Court 12 clay, banged up after an awkward fall during his opening match in the singles, they did not even appear certain participants.
The 34-year-old was only in that draw because he had been local and willing when Murray pulled out this week. As he struggled through the next few games, unable to live with the world’s 384th ranked player, you briefly feared that Murray’s Olympic career might end them same way as that at Wimbledon: stood up by his partner, a press release providing the final act.
But all dressed up with nowhere to go on a picturesque evening like this? In the city of love, not a chance.
He and Evans, without looking exactly slick, eased into a contest that stayed on serve for four games, but when the Japanese broke in the fifth, the Brits found no response. One ball allowed through a racquet-length gap between the pair at the baseline, as both hesitated at the backswing’s apex, told you things had not quite clicked.
Murray, through all the success and suffering, glory and pain, has always felt like more of a marathon man
And when they don’t, in this format, other things, bad ones, happen fast. A 3-2 deficit became a 6-2 first set drilling in a flash and then, with another break at the top of the second quickly consolidated, the end appeared nigh.
This being Murray, though, procession was somehow turned scrap. They levelled twice when threatening to be gapped, first to 2-2 in the second set and then 4-4. The latter brought the most overt show of emotion from Murray, backed up by vigorous flapping of the growing number Union Jacks splattered among the vacant cream seats and chants that, in their accent, suggested one or two natives might have climbed on board.
Evans saved break point with sharp touch at the net and he too looked pumped. Veteran though he may be, this is his Olympic debut, after a positive Covid test forced him out of Tokyo late on. He was already assured at least one more outing, to face eighth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in the second round of the singles next, but had made no secret of the fact that he was all in on his supporting role in the Murray au revoir. Speaking afterwards, he suggested he is likely to abandon his lone quest tomorrow.
Nishikori’s backhand sailed wide, a cry of “let’s go!” from Murray his roundabout way of demanding that the Japanese serve to stay in the set. They did so twice, to ensure a tiebreak and you felt the mood stiffen at twin possibilities: were we witnessing the origins of a comeback or the final strokes of a career?
Murray played a sparkling hand to level the match, a laser serve up the middle and then clinical work on the volley forcing the even more extreme decider of a first-to-ten sprint.
Murray, though, through all the success and suffering, glory and pain, has always felt like more of a marathon man. And so it was, that his great race once again simply refused to be run.
