After the end of his impressive career, the Centre Court of the Queen’s Club in London will be renamed in honour of Andy Murray. The 37-year-old Scot announced his retirement from professional tennis on Thursday after he and his doubles partner Dan Evans were defeated 6-2, 6-4 by Americans Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul in the Olympic quarterfinals at the French Open in Paris.
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Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion and former world number one, had announced before the Games that he would retire after the Olympics. After recovering from an operation to remove a cyst on his spine, he withdrew from singles, but won two rounds in doubles and fended off several match points.
This raised hopes of a golden end to his career and a fourth Olympic medal, after he had already won gold in singles in 2012 and 2016 and silver in mixed doubles in 2012.
Appreciation and memories
Queen’s, a preparation tournament for Wimbledon where Murray won the title five times, announced the renaming of Centre Court to “Andy Murray Arena” immediately after his loss in Paris.
LTA CEO Scott Lloyd paid tribute to Murray in a statement as “the greatest tennis player to ever come out of this country and a giant of British sporting history.” Lloyd praised Murray’s tireless dedication to the game and his impressive career, which has provided British tennis fans with numerous moments of pride.
Murray was known not only for his sporting achievements, but also for his commitment to equality and diversity in tennis, qualities that made him an exceptional role model.
“His brilliant play ended the long wait for a British men’s Wimbledon winner, brought home Olympic gold and silver and was the driving factor behind Great Britain’s Davis Cup success in 2015,” Lloyd continued..
After the end of his match, Murray responded in his usual modest manner on social media with a humorous comment: “I never liked tennis anyway” and changed his biography from “I play tennis” to “I played tennis”.
Serbia’s Novak Djokovic, who has played Murray 36 times, praised him as an “incredible competitor and one of the greatest fighters the game has ever seen”. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called Murray a “British great” and thanked him for “two decades of exceptional entertainment and sportsmanship”.
Murray has been the central figure in British tennis for the past two decades, and for several years was part of tennis’s “Big Four” along with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic. His first major success came in 2012, when he defeated Federer in London to win the Olympic gold medal, just weeks after losing to the Swiss in the Wimbledon final.
He won the US Open that same year and ended Britain’s 77-year wait for a men’s Wimbledon champion in 2013, defeating Djokovic in a match watched by 17.3 million Britons. Three years later, he won his second Wimbledon and finished the year as world number one.
