Former world No 1 doubles champion Jamie Murray has announced his retirement from tennis, with the seven-time Grand Slam champion following his brother Andy into the tennis afterlife.
The announcement comes as the elder of the two great Murray brothers has made his moves into different areas of the sport, with his role as Tournament Director at The Queen’s Club combined with an increasingly high-profile broadcasting career.
In a post on social media, he said: “My tennis journey comes to an end after 36 years. I feel very fortunate and privileged for all the amazing experiences this great sport has given me.
“Thanks Mum, Dad, Andy, Ale, Alan, Louis and Thomas for all your incredible support, efforts and sacrifices throughout my career that allowed me to achieve everything I could in the game.
“For everybody else that’s helped and supported me – I appreciate all of you!”
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Murray leaves the game with a glittering legacy, with the story of how he nearly quit the sport in his teenage years highlighting how this story could have had a very different ending.
A highly promising junior player who was being tipped to go all the way to the top as a singles player, he competed against a young Rafael Nadal and Richard Gasquet in his formative days.
British tennis chiefs quickly identified his potential and he moved away from his Scottish homeland as he joined the LTA network and looked to take his game to the next level.
A combination of homesickness and a change to his forehand that backfired saw him return home and give up the game for a period, as he revealed in next week’s episode of the Off Court with Greg Rusedski podcast.
“I was definitely one of the best in the world at 10, 11, 12,” said Murray
“I mean, I was winning a lot of the European tournaments that the LTA would take us to. I was competing with guys like Gasquet and Nadal. They were my age group. They were probably a little bit better than me at that time.
“They were opening up these regional centres for coaching and I went to Cambridge because there was other kids my age there and I knew them all because we were always playing tournaments together.
“It didn’t work out for me at all. I was in a separate school to the kids I knew and the ones I was with didn’t have my lifestyle or interests.
“Then the coaching just didn’t work out for me, which was a shame. They tried to change my forehand and I got massive, like complex about that, which I never really got over and that’s kind of on me, really.
“I guess I figured out how to make that work in order to make a career in tennis. You know, doubles was the way for me to do that. I was not going to be able to play singles with the forehand.
“I basically lost all confidence in the forehand and it was like a really yippy shot for me. And I was like really self-conscious of it through my career. At that point, I basically went home and gave up tennis for about eight or nine months.”
Jamie returned and enjoyed some doubles success with his brother Andy before he went on to win two men’s Doubles titles with Bruno Soares and also claim five Mixed doubles titles at Grand Slam level.
His proudest moment may have come when he played alongside his brother in Britain’s memorable Davis Cup win in 2015, with the ties the duo played in front of their Scottish fans in Glasgow among the most memorable in his career.
He leaves the sport with a fine legacy and a prominent voice that will continue in his role as a commentator as a tournament director.
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The post Jamie Murray retires: How the once great junior quit tennis – and then became a Grand Slam champion appeared first on Tennis365.
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