While everyone cannot defy age and gravity like Djokovic and Nadal, Andy Murray shows fighting on is what connects us all

HIGHLIGHTS: Bublik avenges Rotterdam defeat

Andy Murray has more than made a name for himself over the course of his 17-year pro tennis career. Just ask his daughter Sophia Olivia.

“My oldest one is aware,” Murray said this week, when he was asked if his children knew that he was famous. “Like sometimes she called me ‘Andy Murray,’ which I find incredibly awkward. I’m like, ‘No, I’m Daddy, I’m not Andy Murray, I’m Daddy.”

“She does it now to wind me up,” Murray continued with a laugh. “She does it especially when she’s around her friends and stuff.”

It hardly matters that Murray is 34, ranked 88th, and hasn’t been past the third round at a Grand Slam event in five years. He’s still Sir Andy Murray, and he can still pack an arena and get a stadium behind him in just about any location in the world. That includes Indian Wells, Calif., where chants of “Let’s go Andy!” helped push him across the finish line in a three-set, first-round win over Taro Daniel on Friday. On Sunday, Stadium 2 was also full for Murray’s second-round match against Andrey Bublik, and the support was nearly enough to push him across the finish line in a first-tiebreaker that went on for 20 points and nearly 20 minutes.

For a split second, Murray seemed to have that tiebreaker won. Up a set point, he approached the net behind a crosscourt forehand, and Bublik blocked a shaky forehand pass that looked as if it was going to float wide. But it didn’t float quite wide enough. Instead, it landed on the outside edge of the sideline. Murray couldn’t return it, and a few minutes later, Bublik won the tiebreaker, 11-9, and went on to earn his first win over Murray in three tries, 7-6 (9), 6-3.

“If I look at a match like today, I had all of the opportunities really in the first set,” Murray said. “…I certainly created more of the opportunities and I didn’t take them.”

“You need to, when you get those chances, be ruthless, and I just didn’t quite play well enough in those moments today and that’s the thing that obviously I want to turn around.”

One step up, one step back: It has been that kind of season for the former No. 1. After reaching a final in Sydney in January, he has lost in the second round at his last five events. During that time, Murray has also lost to two opponents he had recently beaten, Bublik and Jannik Sinner. Murray has cracked the Top 100 in the rankings, and on Friday he won his 700th career match. But he is still forced to take wild cards into big tournaments like Indian Wells and Miami, a situation that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. After Miami, he plans to skip the clay-court season and train with Ivan Lendl in Orlando.

Historically, Murray’s frustrations are normal for a 34-year-old former No. 1 who has already retired and unretired once before, and who has undergone multiple surgeries on multiple body parts. But in the era of the Big 3, his struggles don’t seem as natural as they should. Last year, at 34, Novak Djokovic nearly won the Grand Slam; this year, at 35, Rafael Nadal won the Australian Open, and on Saturday he came back form 2-5 down in the third set to beat a player, Seb Korda, who is 15 years his junior. So far, Murray has been unable to match Nadal’s and Djokovic’s ability to defeat Father Time on a regular basis.

“To be honest, I’ve not been playing well,” Murray said on Friday. “There’s obviously been the physical battle, but also mental battle as well, of trying to find my game, trying to be patient and not get too frustrated and too down on myself, which has been tough these last four or five months.”

“I really need to try and find that consistency. That’s something that’s taken awhile to come. It’s going to take some time on the practice court to work on. I’m looking forward to working on that with Ivan after the Miami tournament.”

Murray’s game has always been predicated on consistency, and the speed necessary to create it. He’s never been a full-on attacking player. Now, when he’s facing taller and younger opponents seemingly every week—at 6-foot-5, Bublik is the new ATP norm—Murray can seem like he’s trapped in an endless loop, scrambling back and forth across the baseline, just trying to stay alive in rallies with the bigger hitters across the net.

I really need to try and find that consistency... I’m looking forward to working on that with Ivan (Lendl) after the Miami tournament. Andy Murray

Will Murray ever escape that pattern? Will he string together enough wins to start getting seeded? Will he ever reach anything like the heights of his late-20s prime? At first, when he began his most recent comeback, he said he didn’t need to win Grand Slams to find satisfaction in this late phase of his career. But high standards die hard for ex-champions.

“My goal is not to get back in the Top 100,” he said last September. “I would want to get back in the Top 10 would be more something that would me in terms of a goals. Winning tournaments and getting up towards the top of the rankings is motivating me.”

And yet even when he’s losing in early rounds, Murray’s determination alone make him worth watching. The fans who come to see him know his name, of course, but they also come to see a great athlete fighting against his inevitable decline, whether or not he’s winning that battle. In Stadium 2 at Indian Wells on Sunday, the crowd roared along with Murray’s defiant fist-pumps, and commiserated with his howls of anger and disbelief.

By playing on with only scant hope of reliving his past Grand Slam glory, Murray sends a message worth hearing: Not everyone can defy age and gravity like Djokovic and Nadal, but that shouldn’t keep us from competing and expecting the most from ourselves. The fight, as Murray continues to show, is the thing.