Murray's Field of Dreams

With his straight sets victory over Radek Stepanek, Murray had, at a stroke, catapulted himself into the tennis stratosphere. Despite losing a gruelling five-set match to David Nalbandian last night, the teenager from Dunblane has launched an entire industry in sporting hyperbole. As the headline writers sharpened their pencils, Murray was hailed as the new Henman, the saviour of British tennis, the country’s next great sporting hero — bigger even than Wayne Rooney.

As Murray left Court No 1 after his demolition of Stepanek, stopping to sign autographs for the deluge of fans who crowded him, Henman slunk away in his chauffeured Jaguar. Henman Hill was renamed Murray Field and Britain was enjoying its first taste of “Andymonium”. As the back pages put it:

“The king is dead. Long live the king.”

The next day young Scots were trying to emulate their new hero. At the end of the main road in Murray’s home town in Stirlingshire is Dunblane Sports Club where, on a dismal afternoon last Friday, the courts were packed.

Katie Gater, 14, playing tennis with her mother, is coached by Murray’s mother Judy. “It’s not usually like this. It’s usually just me and my sister out playing when it is windy and rainy. But now everybody’s out,” she said.

Another hopeful on the courts was Gregor MacLean, 11, who is on the Scotland tennis team and has played against Murray: “He would say to us, ‘If you can return my serve I’ll give you a fiver’. But no one could come close.”

For Murray, tennis is not a gentlemanly way to pass a pleasant summer afternoon, it is a gladiatorial contest. His all-time sporting hero is not a tennis great like McEnroe or Bjorg, but Muhammad Ali. What particularly struck Murray’s new fans at Wimbledon was his aggression — a side of his game that becomes easier to understand when you learn that he sees many similarities between tennis and boxing.

“Both sports are basically one-on-one confrontations, with the two contestants trying to use skill, strength and power to wear down one another,” he said recently.

The contemporary boxer he most admires is Britain’s 26- year-old WBU champion Ricky Hatton, known as the Hit Man. “I’ve read that he is a normal, well-balanced young man but once he goes through the ropes he becomes cold-blooded and merciless,” said Murray. “They are qualities I’d like to think I take onto the tennis court. I don’t want to be a runner-up or a semi-finalist. Only titles will satisfy me.”

Murray first swung a racket in anger when he was three years old. It was a natural game for him to try; his mother was the Scottish national tennis coach and a former professional player.

“She took me round to the local courts and I just started playing,” Murray recalled. “I’m not sure if I took to it straight away. I can’t really remember but my mum said I wasn’t very good.”

He soon improved and Judy could see he had promise. But he was not convinced that the sport was for him and would give up for months on end, playing football with his pals in the park and in the school team where he excelled.

Rangers made an offer of a schoolboy deal. For his mother it was a watershed moment — would her son turn his back on tennis and choose the preferred sport of 99% of Scottish boys? Tennis won out. “I’m not so good when I’m part of a team,” Murray said later. “I’m better when I’m by myself.” He notched up success after success, starting with the Under-12s Orange Bowl world championships in Florida in 1999.

Ellinore Lightbody, the Scottish national coach, recalls seeing the young Murray at the under-14s tournament at Tarbes in France. “In the semi-final he came back from way, way down and that is an episode that sticks in my mind because he just decided he wasn’t going to be beaten. Even then he was very, very competitive and he refused to accept mediocrity.”

With Murray’s potential obvious to all, the Lawn Tennis Association begged him to move to one of its south of England training centres. Judy Murray had other ideas. Her elder son Jamie had been down that route. He had been homesick and his performance had dipped.

She chose the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona, Europe’s premier tennis school. With 29 courts and four different surfaces, plus open-air swimming pools in landscaped grounds, nowhere was better. Both mother and son knew it would mean harder work, even more commitment and only five weeks at home in Scotland every year. But Murray was hungry for it and settled in with no trouble. The £30,000-a-year fee was met by the UK tennis authorities and sponsors.

Emilio Sanchez, the former Spanish star who helped to found the academy, is a Murray fan. “This kid will go far if he becomes strong in the legs,” he said. “He has many different options to hurt an opponent.”

Although Judy’s influence is undeniable, Lightbody insists that his mother has never put Murray under undue pressure and has encouraged him to make friends and lead the life of a normal teenager off court: “His mum knows when to push and when to back off and let him be a kid and grow up. That is what has been done incredibly well with Andy, in terms of allowing his personality to develop while challenging him in the right direction. But his tennis has always been his priority — it has to be to get to his level.”

Murray was named BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2004. Until last week the pinnacle of his career was winning last year’s US Open junior singles championship, an achievement in itself.

Last March he became Britain’s youngest Davis Cup player and served notice of his form in a pivotal doubles win against Israel in Tel Aviv, playing with David Sherwood. Six weeks later he played his first match on the ATP tour and was narrowly defeated by Jan Hernych, a Czech ranked 79th in the world.

Murray then reached the third round of the Stella Artois tournament at Queen’s Club. It was a foretaste of the damage he would inflict on his elders and betters at Wimbledon.

Murray is Scotland’s best tennis hope for a generation: the last time a Scot wowed Wimbledon was Winnie Shaw, who reached the quarter-finals in 1970 and 1971 and the semi-final of the ladies’ doubles in 1972. Recently Shaw was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.

One member of the selection panel is Grant Jarvie, professor of sports studies at Stirling University and author of Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation. He believes there are certain characteristics that Scots look for in a national sporting hero: “They like someone who is proud of their Scottishness and is ready to take on anyone. At the same time they like people to keep their feet on the ground and not be too big for their boots, while still believing in a quiet way that you can be the best in the world. And they expect a never-say-die attitude, even against the odds. I see a lot of that in Andrew Murray.”

With fame and fortune comes a price. The pressures of the game took its toll on his parents’ marriage. Judy is said to have grown apart from her husband William, a retail manager, as she travelled around the world pursuing her own career. They divorced last March. “William is very much in the background regarding Andrew’s tennis,” said a friend of the family.

“He and Judy had very different lifestyles. While tennis was Judy’s life, William had an everyday job and she was often away. Their split was mutual and amicable and William is still very, very close to Andrew.”

When Murray’s biography is written, much will be made of the day in March 1996 when Thomas Hamilton walked into his primary school in Dunblane and shot dead 16 children and a teacher. Murray was one of the lucky ones: he was walking towards the gym where the killings took place when he was ushered away by a teacher. They sat singing songs in another part of the school until the police assured them it was safe.

Murray was two years older than the children who died and was friends with some of their siblings. He had attended Hamilton’s youth clubs. But he dislikes talking about it and his mother has been known to describe their home town as Stirling so as to escape the inevitable questions.

“You have to try to make some sense of it, but that is very hard when you’re a primary school child and suddenly some of your friends aren’t there any more,” Murray once said.

“It was only about four or five years later that I finally got to grips with the scale of what happened at the school — but I know I was one of the lucky ones and I am eternally grateful for that.”

When Murray marched out on Centre Court yesterday he was listening to music on his iPod to get himself psyched up. His favourite track by the US rap band Black Eyed Peas is Let’s Get It Started, which has the line, “Burn it till it’s burned out, Turn it till it’s turned out.”

Poor Henman looks burnt out, although some would argue he never caught fire in the first place. For Murray, after a remarkable week in SW19, things are beginning to hot up.

Additional reporting: Ed Habershon, Holly Marney, Neil White