Andy Murray to leave brother Jamie behind with unsurprising retirement decision
Jamie Murray is preparing for life on the tennis tour without his younger brother Andy.
Jamie Murray isn’t surprised that his younger brother Andy will finish his professional tennis career before him.
The three-time Grand Slam champion previously said he would stop playing this summer, though he has yet to give a specific retirement date.
Jamie, 38, is still planning to play for a while despite taking on a new role as the Queen’s tournament director. And he shed light on what life will be like without Andy on the tour.
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“That will be weird to not have him there,” the former doubles No. 1 said after his first-round win at the French Open. “I mean obviously it’s a fairly unique situation to have your brother doing the same job as you at a high-level sport and travelling the world together.”
Although they don’t hang out too often at tournaments, the elder Murray brother explained that it was good to know that his brother was around. He continued: “That is a nice thing, even if, you know, we don’t spend loads of time together at the events just because schedules and stuff can be very different.
“But you know that in the background you’ve always got someone from your family there, which is nice even if you’re not accessing it all the time. When he does stop, whenever that is, it’ll be strange not to have him on the tour. Because we’ve been doing the same thing for like 20 years basically. It’ll be a big miss.”
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Jamie is 15 months older than Andy and has already started to take steps towards his post-playing career, hosting the Battle of the Brits events before taking up the tournament director job at Queen’s from this year onwards. But he always knew that the two-time Olympic champion would be the first to hang up his racket.
“One because he’s been through a lot more physically than I have. And for me like I need to keep playing,” he laughed, hinting at the difference in their career earnings. “He doesn’t need to keep playing. And obviously in doubles you can play longer as well.”
While Andy isn’t a full-time doubles player, he partnered up with Dan Evans at the French Open in a bid to prove themselves in the team format ahead of the Olympics. They crashed out in the first round to Sebastian Baez and Thiago Seyboth Wild 7-6(6) 7-6(3) on a rainy Friday evening.
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After days of doubles matches being postponed, Jamie thought that his brother wouldn’t mind heading home and preparing for the grass swing. “I think he’ll be happy to get home and start practising on grass for hopefully a good season for him. I think the last few days kind of killed a lot of people’s motivation to be around here, you know,” he explained.
The 38-year-old also commended his brother for committing to the doubles instead of pulling out, explaining that he was “pumped” to compete. Jamie added: “Obviously he took a wildcard as well so he obviously wanted to go out today and put in a good performance and stuff. I’m sure for a lot of guys it would’ve been easy to pull out or whatever but he wanted to do that for those reasons and have a good tournament.”
They could now join forces at Wimbledon as Jamie will not be with his usual partner, Michael Venus. Speaking after he and Evans crashed out of the doubles draw, Andy said: “My brother doesn't have a partner for Wimbledon currently. We have spoken a little bit about it. So may do that, but not 100 per cent sure yet. I mean obviously Jamie, I mean, he could also get a good partner, as well.”
