Andy Murray legacy now cemented after Davis Cup glory
Published:
Jamie Clark, Sports Editor | November 29, 2015
The Davis Cup is a team tennis event, but you wouldn’t know it after singles world number two Andy Murray ended Great Britain’s postwar wait for a title triumph.
Despite Kyle Edmund’s best efforts, taking a 2-0 lead over David Goffin in the opening rubber only to lose 3-2, it is the best player to pick up a racket in the British Isles since Fred Perry that turned this tie with Belgium around, taking an unassailable 3-1 lead.
Coral made Team GB odds-on favourites to capture their first Davis Cup since 1936 for a reason – and that was magnificent Murray. Emulating Perry’s performances 79 years ago, the Scot has now won almost everything worth winning in tennis.
From Davis Cup despair to champions
Straight sets victories over Ruben Bemelmans and Goffin, with a doubles delight alongside brother Jamie sandwiched in between, ensured Andy Murray maintained a 100 per cent Davis Cup rubbers record to end the 2015 campaign with 11 victories.
Eight of those wins were in singles match-ups and have helped to complete the most marked reversal of fortunes for Great Britain since 2010. They were then on the brink of relegation to Europe/Africa Group III, but the appointment of Leon Smith as Davis Cup captain a year later has brought with it a terrific transformation.
Team GB had played all their ties on home soil this year until the final, but an indoor clay surface at the Flanders Expo Centre in Ghent didn’t faze Murray, whose early exit from the ATP World Tour Finals shall now be recorded for posterity as a blessing in disguise.
Murray now joins Perry on British tennis pantheon
Individual glory nobly sacrificed for a team triumph; it does make for the stuff of old romantics. Murray’s own honour roll now contains an Olympic Gold medal in 2012, the US Open thereafter and that Wimbledon win in 2013 to go alongside the Davis Cup.
While Great Britain’s defence of the Davis Cup begins in March at home to Japan in Birmingham, with the potentially mouthwatering match between Murray and Kei Nishikori, the Australian Open comes around first.
He’s fallen short four times before in Melbourne, firstly to all-time Grand Slam great Roger Federer and then to world number one Novak Djokovic in three of the last five finals. Murray is 5/1 to go one better than Australian Open runner-up, riding the crest of this successful end of season wave.
