Ringside Report Takes a Closer Look at Tennis Player Andy Murray

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

As I sit in my Kailyard I wonder often about the future.

I love Andy Murray. I do. I am no great tennis fan; will sit at the Wimbledon finals and think I should also watch the French Open or the Australian Open and then forget all about them. I am a casual observer of the sport, like so many other people.

But what I love most about Murray is he is still playing the sport he loves. Unlike many other sportsmen and women who get to a point where they start sentences with, I just don’t have it any more OR I need the big contests to help me get out of bed and train now, he has faced adversity and said, I love playing tennis and I shall keep on doing it.

At the Qatar Open he lost in straight sets and only won one game. For many that would be the point you would have the conversation with your racquet and say, it’s not you, but me. I need to move on now, it’s been lovely but we both want different things. The break-up would be real.

But I know it is a relationship he has put too much into and shall try to make it work for both. He is, to us Scots a bit of an icon. He is a bit of a hero.

Part of that of course is his unflinching support for the women’s game. Woe betide a reporter who does not treat both sides equally. Murray will not stint in correcting them. He takes his sport seriously and he takes his role equally seriously. He is an ambassador and a role model. His presence at tournaments means there are headlines in the UK. Those headlines bring attention to the grass roots and continues to provide opportunities for local clubs to have the focus on them as other British tennis players attempt to emulate his success.

There is little doubt that he has suffered doubt about his place within the tennis Gods, especially as we see the likes of Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer continue to add to their tallies of tournament wins, but he has continued to play. Its is this determination that despite hip operations he has a love for the sport that made him number 1 in the world, gave him the opportunity to win two Olympic Medals and the chance to become the first British men’s champion at Wimbledon for so long that it truly meant something for the whole country when he did it. It truly did.

But he is now down the rankings but still playing.

There are many who shall say that he is tarnishing his legacy. Is he nothing! He is showing others how they should be doing it. He is blossoming in a way that others should take heed. He is showing people that loving the game is the point of being a major star.

In soccer, we get players who have been picked for their country who have a career and then at some point “retire” from playing for their country. Why? They didn’t get picked for a game, don’t like the methods of the coach or they are concentrating on their game at a domestic level or whatever are the many alme excuses. There are some who make the claim, which is reasonable, that having been away from their families for a long time at tournaments, not getting picked, and missing their children growing up, that they feel their time is better served being in the home for their families rather than abroad for their country. I get that. But it is hardly a six-month tour of Afghanistan!

Of course, it is rather different in combat sports. The professional pugilist or Mixed Martial Arts fighter who go on beyond their time, risk far more than a tarnished legacy. Real damage may be done, but in sports where you have less of a risk – you should show more of a respect for your game.

It makes what Murray does even more remarkable because he wants to play the sport that has made his name, made him a considerable bank balance, given him a life to lead that is the envy of most of us. Despite not winning as often as he has been, despite not bringing home the baubles and the riches that he once was expected to gain, that he is giving service to tennis as a sport for the people who have looked up to him and been the supporters of the good years.

I really love Andy Murray, so I do…

A view from the new Kailyard or, how you look over there, from over here…

(Kailyard n. a cabbage patch, often attached to a school of writing – the Kailyard School – a genre of overly sentimental and sweet Scottish literature from the late 19th century where sentimental and nostalgic tales are told in escapist tales of fantasy, but here we seek to reverse it by making the Kailyard Observations of effective invective comment from that looks not to return to the past but to launch us into a better future by the one Donald worth believing…)

And today’s Scots word tae bamboozle ye…

Each time we see ye, we shall try tae leave ye wi a word o oors tae replace a word o thine. Jist fur the sake o learnin, ken!

The Saltire – Like many Scots references, close to the French, sauteour or old French, saulter meaning the heraldic term saltire or the white X on our flag. Which is now commonly used to refer to our flag which is a white saltire on a blue background. The X is said to be representative of the apostle Andrew who was crucified upside down on such a contraption as he believed himself unfit to be crucified in the same way as Christ. The blue background came courtesy of a battle in 832 AD when the Scots and Picts saw the sky above them with a white cloud cross in the midst of the blue sky. Taking this as a sign, at the Battle of Athelstaneford, they beat their enemy: the English. Some things…