My six-year-old tennis prodigy knows nothing about Andy Murray - I’ve got the stories ready

Murray’s retirement has honed into view this week – and I am dreading the day he calls time

It was a surprise when I turned up at the public tennis courts in my local park and a sign on the locked gate informed me that from now on I’d have to pay to play. For my six-year-old son, brandishing the new racket he got for his birthday, it wasn’t so much a surprise as a devastating blow which prompted tears.

I didn’t have my phone so couldn’t register with the new booking site there and then. “You can have all the money in my piggy bank,” offered Hector, unaware that hard cash wouldn’t solve the problem or indeed that he was no longer in possession of any, on account of me having to plunder the coins for the second-hand school uniform sale. By the time we’d returned home and signed up the rain was hammering down.

My first reaction to the new fee was: “What would Andy Murray say?” My second, once I’d thought about it some more, was: “Okay, so Edinburgh Council, who’ve just resurfaced the courts in vivid green and blue, are strapped for cash for other things. This will keep the vandals away, and the pooing dogs.” But a few weeks on, and despite it being winter this doesn’t normally stop Scots inspired by the great man, only in my park fewer seem to be playing now, so I ask again: “What would Andy say?”

Murray addresses the media after his Melbourne defeat by Tomas Martin Etcheverry.

Any time he spoke it wasn’t always the obvious thing. It wouldn’t be a calculated headline-grabber but, almost inevitably, would make news. When Murray talked, we listened. Just like when he played, we watched.

Hang on, past tense? This might be the first occasion I’ve used that in relation to him. He’s still with us. Still playing and still fighting. But is this the beginning of the farewell tour?

By the way, he’ll hate that. Hate that we’d think he’d do such a thing (which we don’t because what we know about him tells us he wouldn’t). It’s just that this year might end up being called that by someone, some opportunistic headline writer, which would be unfortunate, so I won’t mention it again.

Hopefully he’ll excuse the mild agitation. It’s just that we’ve never had a sporting superstar of this magnitude and we don’t want him to stop but know that soon he will.

Andy Murray may have waved goodbye to the Australian Open crowd for the last time.

It’s not for us to say when that will be. It’s not for us to say that we don’t want to see him lose too many more matches, if any, in the manner of his first round defeat at the Australian Open. Undoubtedly Murray will be saying this to himself. Disappointed, sad, angry. He confessed he was all of these things after the loss to Tomas Martin Etcheverry who approached the net at the end, quite the apologetic victor. Tennis’s locker-rooms know better than any of we mere mortals what it has involved for Murray to still be competing after all he’s been through.

What we’ve been through, the highs and lows of fandom, is frivolous in comparison. Nevertheless, watching our man is invariably described as a “rollercoaster”. For example: “It was a late, late show at Wimbledon as Andy Murray transformed Centre Court into a fairground and cranked the lever to send the crowd hurtling through the steep bends of a near-five-hour rollercoaster of a match – and it was only after he’d saved a seventh match point that he let them stagger into the night minutes before the curfew, though hardly anyone had the energy left to acclaim an impossible triumph.” Such overblown, over-purpled prose. I may have written it.

But Melbourne all by itself has been the scene of countless Murray dramaramas. Last week’s post-match emotions, admitting the manner of defeat might have “narrowed the time-frame” for quitting, was quickly compared to his post-match emotions at the Aussie Open five years before. In 2019 following another first-round exit he wasn’t holding out huge hope of returning. “Maybe I’ll see you again,” he told the audience. “If I want to go again I’ll need to have a big operation, with no guarantee I’ll be able to come back from it.” Unsurprisingly the tears flowed.

Then there were those charges to the final of the Down Under Slam. Five, no less. Excitable Aussies really wanted him to win at least once. They included my four cousins who’d set sail from Edinburgh to Melbourne as Ten Pound Poms.

And last year around this time in the Rod Laver Arena, dramarama which was out of this world. Remember the rally in the match against Thanasi Kokkinaskis who smashed and smashed and smashed, Murray trumping Houdini manacled upside down in a sealed water chamber for getting out of a tight spot. At the time I called it sport’s greatest-ever 45 seconds and stand by that.

Biased? Of course I am. Dreading the day when he no longer puts years on me watching him because he’s given up? Of course I am.

While contemplating the rest of 2024 Murray may be dreading the day as a retired legend when he’ll be asked whether, after all those heroics exciting and inspiring a nation, it is unfortunate that tennis in such an unpromisingly drookit climate isn’t free.

But, you know, Hector and I have enrolled. It’s only £1 a time for goodness sake. My boy’s racket bears the name of Rafael Nadal so the great Spanish bull is his favourite player. Imagine, though, knowing nothing of Andy Murray and the tales that are about to unfold. I’m ready with them.