A great champion’: Andy Murray remembered by rivals before retiring at Olympics

Three-time grand slam winner’s opponents recall how a switch flicked and a humble teenager became a tennis great.

Over the past 20 years, Andy Murray has built one of the greatest tennis careers. As he prepares to hang up his racket at the Paris Olympics, those who know him well reflect on the early days of his career and his legacy.
Jamie Murray, Andy’s elder brother and a former doubles No 1 At our tennis club, we were probably the youngest ones that were playing there. We’d always muck in with the older kids. Our mum was the club coach at the time and had a ton of junior players. Not necessarily amazing players, but it was a thriving club. There was a lot of atmosphere about the place and I think that’s where we grew to love the game.
Leon Smith, Murray’s childhood coach and now head of men’s tennis at the LTA I’d first seen him when I was playing junior tournaments and Judy [his mother] would bring him along. He was four or five. I remember him playing short tennis, and he was very highly skilled and coordinated. By 11-12 he was that good. The most obvious thing was that he was playing tennis and football a few times a week, and he took it really seriously, but you put him on a match court and the guy just lit up. He just wouldn’t want to lose. In that Orange Bowl final [an event in Florida Murray won in 1999], I remember him drop-shotting the guy so many times. This guy was much bigger than him – Andy wasn’t that big. He was more average to small size – and he kept drop-shotting this guy because he knew he couldn’t beat him for power.

Jamie Baker, Murray’s longtime friend and junior rival I don’t think I’ve met anyone who was as fast a learner; every time he hit a ball, he was taking something from it, learning from it. Just so in the moment and in touch with the ball and the game of tennis that he was never wasting one second. That’s why, as a junior, his style changed so much. He went through a phase where he would just moonball every single ball. Every single ball. And then the next time you played him, he would be drop-shotting you every single shot. That’s not normal.

Jamie Murray We’re quite close in age but at a young age, I was probably better than him at most things. That changed in tennis quite quickly [he laughs]. I had a brother I wanted to be better than and it pushed us to get better and that desire to want to beat each other, I’m sure, helped us. It wasn’t like in Scotland that we had loads of players, loads of competition and things like that. A lot of that probably came from within our own household.