You feel the nerves before a final, but this was the worst ever!

The story of Murray's historic title win 10 years ago as told by those there

- Matt Majendie

THE night before a big match, the sensation fluctuates. Sometimes, the nerves might lay dormant, at others they are out of control, sleep then proving hard to come by.

Andy Murray is no stranger to a night to ponder such an occasion. On six different nights previously, he had looked ahead to a grand slam final.

But at Wimbledon in 2013, the magnitude of it was all the more monumental. His every move had been pored over for the fortnight with the prospect of a first British male champion for 77 years.

In his first four grand slam finals, he had suffered defeat. This time, the sensation was different as he prepared to go to bed the night before facing Novak Djokovic.

He had broken his grand slam curse by beating Djokovic in the US Open final the year before, having won Olympic gold on Wimbledon’s Centre Court just a few weeks before that.

“Sometimes before a big match, you feel nervous the night before, you wake up and still feel a bit nervous and it kind of stays there,” Murray said. “But I felt fine the night before, I slept well, got up and was fine in the morning.”

He followed the usual pre-match rigmarole of practice and then quite suddenly about half an hour before, things changed. “I got really nervous, maybe the worst ever,” he recalls.

Inside Centre Court, the nervous anticipation was palpable. It was my first year covering Wimbledon, for umpire Mohamed Lahyani it was his 21st, but this one felt different.