At Indian Wells, Andy Murray and Venus Williams have shown the risks and rewards of hanging on in tennis

By now, after nearly 20 years on tour, Andy Murray has a pretty good idea of what he’ll hear from the crowd as he plays. A “come on” here, a “let’s go” there, a “right now” before a big point.

Apparently, though, when you’ve been around for as long as he has, you get some fans who are a little more invested in you. Murray heard from one of those devotees—a lot—during his first-round win over David Goffin at Indian Wells this week.

“It was just constant, like, cheering, the whole match,” Murray said of one fan who sat directly behind him on one side of the stadium court. “He wasn’t just saying ‘Come on.’ He was like saying to me, ‘This is the best I’ve ever seen you serve, man,’ and ‘You’re moving great, considering all your problems.’”

“He was almost like a second coach, so that was good,” said Murray, who rewarded his superfan with a towel and a handshake after his win.

This was one of those days when Murray, who will turn 37 in May, was happy to still be playing tennis, happy to still be doing what it takes to compete, happy to see that he can still reach some semblance of his old level. It doesn’t happen to him every day. Murray came to Indian Wells with a 2-6 record in 2024, and last month he said that he’ll probably hang up his sticks for good “sometime this summer,” after either Wimbledon or the Paris Olympics.

“I get asked about it after every single match that I play, every single tournament that I play,” Andy Murray said last month of the retirement question. “I’m bored of the question, to be honest.”

Murray has already retired once, of course, back in Australia in 2022. He held a tearful press conference, and heard the bittersweet ovations from the crowd, while reporters like myself wrote our tributes and eulogies to the unlikely feminist warrior. Then he had hip surgery and came back.

He isn’t the only player who has waffled about when to call it quits recently. The first week at Indian Wells has had a Groundhog Day quality to it, as a parade of 30-something veterans have overrun the courts.

Murray, Venus Williams, Stan Wawrinka, Angelique Kerber, Caroline Wozniacki, Gael Monfils, Fabio Fognini, David Goffin: We watched them here a decade ago—or much more—and we’re still watching them in 2024. On Friday, they’ll be joined by three more old hands, Victoria Azarenka, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Grigor Dimitrov. Unfortunately, the most famous of their legion, Rafael Nadal, couldn’t join them this week.

The graying of the game isn’t a new phenomenon, and in most ways it has been a positive development. As Azarenka, Wozniacki and Kerber prove, having a child no longer has to mean the end of a woman’s career. And fans tend to like seeing and rooting for people they know. Monfils, 37, drew a big crowd for his first-round win, and showed that he has hardly lost any of his famous bounding athleticism. Williams, 43, played in front of fans who had missed her during her 15-year absence from Indian Wells. Wawrinka gave us a glimpse of what may be the last great one-handed backhand in tennis history.

When to hang it up has always been a tough question for tennis players. I always think of what Jimmy Connors said—or did—when my colleague Peter Bodo asked him what he missed most about the tour after he had left it. Connors silently put his hands together to mimic someone clapping. Applause is addictive, and nothing in life can replace the rush that you feel when you do something well in front of thousands of people.

In team sports, the decision to retire is made for you, by the owners and managers who can no longer use you. In tennis, you can keep going for as long as tournament directors think you’re worthy of a wild card.

As Venus showed on Thursday, if you’re a big enough star, that can on for about as long as you like.

Williams cracked a few 120-m.p.h. serves and played well for a set, but the bottom dropped out of her game midway through the second, and she was bageled by 80th-ranked Nao Hibino in the third. Still, if Venus, who hadn’t played since the US Open, wants to pop up every few months and try her luck at the game she obviously still loves, most fans and tournaments won’t begrudge her the chance.

How much you like seeing the same familiar faces year after year may depend on how much tennis you watch. Even a shot as brilliant as Wawrinka’s backhand, and a player as charismatic as Monfils, can lose their glow over time, in part because they don’t offer us any suspense. We know exactly what the veterans are capable of, and not capable of. Young players provide, among other things, the thrill of anticipation. How good will Jannik Sinner or Aryna Sabalenka become? What’s in store for Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff in the years ahead? Those questions are the lifeblood of fandom.

But as Murray’s superfan proved, the old guys have their appeal, too. We’ve been through their ups and downs with them. A few years ago, Rod Laver talked to a group of reporters at Indian Wells about how he saw Roger Federer’s career going as he entered his mid-30s. Laver said that as he aged, he had been able to play as well as ever—for a day. The hard part was doing it again the next day.

On Friday, Murray will try to do it again when he faces the much-younger and higher-ranked Andrey Rublev. Let’s hope he got his superfan a front-row seat.