Andy vindicates bold call and fuels dream of a 'special' farewell

BEYOND the three Grand Slam titles, the two Olympic gold medals and the Davis Cup heroics, Andy Murray has built a career on making the improbable happen.

- Malik Ouzia

No player in the game’s history has won more matches from the brink, at two sets down.

Even he, though, surely cannot have believed here, at 9-4 down in a tiebreak slated as first-to-10, in what at that stage looked absolutely certain to be the final match of his life in professional tennis.

Partner Dan Evans certainly did not. “I never thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to win this from this position’,” the 34-year-old said, as the British pair stared down five match points against their first-round Japanese opposition of Kei Nishikori and Taro Daniel. Crucially, though, he added: “But I didn’t think we’d lost.”

And Murray never does, a player whose aura has always been less about joie de vivre and more about refusal to die. It is why he is here, delaying the moment when it will all be over, reeling off seven points in succession to scrap into what is still only the second round of these Games, when he might have settled for a softer route out long ago.