Life+Style: It’s not the hip prosthesis that matters, but the big heart

35 is the new 25!

– joked Novak Djokovic after his weekend match win against the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, when he was asked what he thought about the fact that the youngsters they launched the offensive a they are big against, and no better proof is needed for this than the fact that after the weekend matches, the Serbian player remains the only Grand Slam winner who is still in the running for the Australian Open trophy this year. On the other hand, Andy Murray, who is the same age as Djokovic, seemed to be trying to convince everyone that 35 is the new 75. Both on and off the court, he moved as if he could collapse at any moment, it was almost bad to watch him put one foot after the other, as his face contorted again and again from the pain.

It’s just that in the meantime, he’s worked wonders in every ball he’s played in Melbourne. And now it is certain that this year’s Australian Open will be remembered for this paradox.

For the adults, it seemed that the greatest opponents were not the young, but their own bodies.

The famously tall for Rafael Nadal, who has a pain threshold he had to give up his first Grand Slam tournament of the year, Djokovic, due to an injury his lack of vaccination did not hinder him this time entering the field, but he is clearly also struggling with a muscle injury and needed medical attention during the match. And Andy Murray had every reason to be on the verge of collapse. And although we won’t see him again on the Melbourne courts in the second week of the tournament, we can’t go without saying what he has given to tennis with his current game.

Of course, Andy Murray’s movement is not only influenced by his 35 years, but also by the hip prosthesis, which, at one time, we thought would end his career. At least that’s what the doctors convinced him, one of whom he ran into in the past few days and told him with undisguised satisfaction that he had proof that he was wrong.

The proof was three absolutely crazy and incredible matches at the Australian Open.

Let’s call the numbers first. Murray, who started from the second half of the top 100 in the rankings in Melbourne, had a difficult time as a non-seed. But the fact that he will fight through two five-set matches, and even bring out the third one almost as well, was not in the 35-year-old’s deck with a hip prosthesis, to put it mildly.

Already his first match against the 13th seeded Italian Matteo Berrettini lasted five hours, exactly 4 hours and 49 minutes, and the last minutes were nerve-rackingly dramatic.

In the second round, he played with the local hero Thanasi Kokkinakis in an almost mythological dimension: it was not enough that they crushed each other for 5 hours and 45 minutes – this became the longest match in the history of the tournament and Murray’s career as well – the match ended at four in the morning with this with an amazing number line: 4-6, 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 7-5 – in favor of Murray. At the age of 35, the Scottish tennis player fought and won the longest match of his life with a piece of metal in his hip, namely from a 2-0 set deficit, even from a match point – and in such a way that his “old body” already contained the five-set match from a few days earlier Matteo Against Berrettini’s “young body”. One of their ball games went viral on social media with every right:

Even John McEnroe tipped his hat and said Andy Murray makes tennis “sparkle”. “We knew Murray had the heart of a champion, that’s for sure, but now he’s absorbed himself even more deeply than we’ve ever seen from him, and after what he’s been through,” raved about his 63-year-old American colleague. And then he didn’t know what he was going to do in the third round.

As the Guardian his journalist put it: Murray may never have felt as old as he did in Saturday’s match against Spain’s Robert Bautista Agut, but nevertheless he fully brought one of the defining attitudes of his career:

he played like he didn’t know he was being beaten.

It was Bautista Agut who nearly sent Murray into retirement four years ago, so there was something symbolic about the two reuniting at the AusOpen.

Statistically speaking, no one in the history of tennis has managed to win the third round after spending more than nine hours on court in the previous two matches. And Murray moved as if he had played tennis until four in the morning in a Grand Slam match not long before. However, it was really a miracle that he was able to win the second set. Bautista eventually defeated Agu in four sets, but he was aware that the arena was not celebrating him.

One measure of Sir Andy Murray’s greatness as a sportsman is that in the modern history of tennis, no one has turned more games from 0-2 down – eleven in number. (Roger Federer, Boris Becker and Aaron Krickstein all boast ten.) Add to that the fact that no tennis player has ever returned to the top after a hip operation like the one he underwent in 2019, and perhaps you can understand why everyone is raving about Andy Murray this season. At the AusOpen even without making it past the third round.

And perhaps many people now realize how much this 35-year-old sportsman gave to tennis, despite the fact that the spotlight did not always find him.

The British tennis player had to wait a painfully long time for his first Grand Slam victory, and it was understandably difficult for him, especially since he came very close to success on several occasions. However, this long wait was just enough for him to develop the idea that Andy Murray is not a champion type.

Then it all changed almost in an instant, when in 2012 he won the London Olympics in front of a home audience, then immediately the US Open and two more Grand Slams. And finally he could cry for joy, and the British had a tennis player who could step out of the shadow of the legendary Fred Perry and win a Grand Slam more than seven decades later.

At the same time, Andy Murray’s career undoubtedly carries with it the painful consideration of what-ifs. What if his hip hadn’t given out? What if he hadn’t reached the peak of his career when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were also besieging their own career peaks? The three of them towered over him like a wall when he was on the verge of a big success, and perhaps no one would blame Murray if he excused himself by saying “sorry, I was born in the wrong time”.

Part of Murray’s strength lies in his ability to make a joke out of it all – last year at the Laver Cup, where the big four came together to give him a fitting farewell the retiring Roger Federerfor example, joked like this on Instagram under their photo together:

here are the big three and a clown.

The trio, who shared 63 Grand Slam trophies between them, was the biggest obstacle to Andy Murray’s three GS titles: eight of his finals ended with either Federer or Djokovic standing in his way. Already when more than one injury crossed his mind.

At the same time, Murray is able to rise above his physical limits thanks to some magical power. In 2019, at the same place, at the Australian Open, he confessed in tears that he had been playing in terrible pain for years and was considering retirement. Back then, even the others took him seriously and basically sent him away.

Four years later, thanks to the surgery, he put himself back together, but in the meantime, the opportunity to consolidate the formation known as the Big Four – Federer, Nadal, Djokovic AND Murray – slipped away, the history books refer to the past decades as the reign of the Big Three. Of course, no one said that sports are not cruel.

However, even in this exceptional era of sports history, Andy Murray managed to win three Grand Slam victories, two Olympic victories and reach world number one. He was aware of his place, he said after losing the final of the 2008 US Open

i can cry like roger, too bad i can’t play like him.

Four years ago, when it seemed that the time for retirement had come, his admirers they couldn’t ignore eitherthat Murray does not have Federer’s grace, Djokovic’s often impossible flexibility or Nadal’s load bearing,

but none of them had so big a heart as the Scotsman.

And it is also certain that he squeezed every last drop of his talent and strength for every single point. He never held anything back on the field.

He recently spoke about how, when the pain of the world is on his face on the pitch, he is actually the happiest “inside”. He rages, yells, argues with himself – tennis has already accepted that Andy Murray is in his element at this time. And after this year’s Australian Open, he must also record that Sir Andy Murray is among the biggest heroes of tennis.