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Three years after ending one of world sport’s most famous hoodoos by becoming the first British man since Fred Perry in 1936 to win the Wimbledon men’s singles title, Andy Murray has once again won tennis’ holy grail.
He has cemented himself as undoubtedly the nation’s greatest tennis player of the modern era.
In his eleventh major final, but first against an opponent other than Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic, the Scot started as favourite against Canadian serving machine Milos Raonic, who by contrast was appearing in his first Grand Slam final.
And the 29-year-old, whose drought-breaking effort in 2013 followed on from winning the Olympic gold medal at these very lawn grass courts in 2012 and winning his first major title at the US Open that same year, certainly did not disappoint in a match lasting just short of three hours.
Raonic served first and after a tight opening few games, Murray would strike first by breaking in the seventh game to take a 4-3 lead in the opening set. He would eventually hold on to take the opening set 6-4.
The 25-year-old Canadian would then ramp up his game in the second set, and while he starred down four break points he would save them all to force a tiebreak, which the Scot subsequently dominated to take a two-sets-to-love lead.
Although Murray had opened up a huge lead on his opponent, he was by no means safe. The All England Club remains the only venue worldwide where the Scot has lost a match from two sets to love up, suffering that collapse on his Wimbledon debut against David Nalbandian in 2005.
Having not yet been threatened on his serve to this point of the match, Murray found himself two break points down in the fifth game of the third set, but he would save them both and again it would go to a tiebreak.
It was all or nothing for Milos Raonic. Could he conjure the seven points required to take the match to a fourth set, or would Murray’s class tell?
Again Murray would dominate the tiebreak and would bring up five match points at 6-1. After Raonic saved the first, the Canadian would net a backhand on the second to lose the match after nearly three hours.
It was a bitterly disappointing end to what had been a breakthrough Grand Slam tournament for the 25-year-old, whose run to the final included coming from two sets to love down to defeat David Goffin in the fourth round and handing the legendary Roger Federer his first ever defeat in a Wimbledon semi-final.
Perhaps those two performances, in which he had to draw on all his mental and physical strength, may have contributed to his flat performance in the final.
Despite being broken only once in the match, his devastating serve, which saw him serve 137 aces leading up to the final, deserted him; he was only able to send down eight aces for the entire match and it also failed him in the two tiebreaks.
Conversely, Murray’s victory caps off a solid fortnight at the All England Club, losing just two sets (against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarter-finals) and exposing the gulf between the contenders and the pretenders in two of his seven matches.
This included straight-sets dismissals of Nick Kyrgios and Tomas Berdych in the fourth round and semi-finals respectively.
It also vindicated his decision to rehire Ivan Lendl as coach, following an at-times publicised partnership with Amelie Mauresmo. Murray’s two previous major titles, as well as the Olympic gold medal in 2012, came with Lendl in his corner.
He also avoided becoming the first man ever to lose the first three Grand Slam finals of a calendar year, after he’d gone down to Novak Djokovic at both the Australian and French Opens earlier this year.
And after, in his own words, failing to make the most of his 2013 triumph which of course broke a 77-year drought of Wimbledon having not produced a British male champion, the Scot has vowed to enjoy this victory more.
Shortly afterwards he posted this photo onto his Facebook account.
https://www.facebook.com/andymurrayofficial/posts/10153729887451966:0
The Scot will now turn his focus to the Rio Olympics, where he is the defending gold medallist from 2012. He destroyed Roger Federer in straight sets just four weeks after losing to the same man in four sets in his first Wimbledon final.
Then there is the US Open to look forward to, where the newly-installed roof will finally be put to use on Arthur Ashe Stadium, eliminating the interruption of play during inclement weather.
It means that three of the four Grand Slam Centre Courts (the exception being Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros) will be served by a roof; in addition, Hisense Arena and Margaret Court Arena (both Australian Open) also use a roof, making the Australian Open the most weather-smart Grand Slam tournament.
Novak Djokovic is the defending champion at Flushing Meadows, and even if he suffers an early defeat like he did at Wimbledon (and Andy Murray goes on to win it), he will still hang onto the world number one ranking until at least November.
To finish off, congratulations to Andy Murray for winning his second Wimbledon title and becoming arguably Britain’s greatest player of the modern era, and commiserations to Milos Raonic, who will be keen to learn on this experience, which could spur him on to the ultimate glory in New York in August.
And that’s all she wrote for the 2016 Wimbledon Championships; Murray will kick off proceedings on Centre Court at 1:00pm local time on Monday, July 3, 2017, the first day of next year’s Championships.
And may this be the third of many more major titles to come for the Scot.
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