A couple of days ago, Andy Murray the tennis player announced that he was going to retire. The Australian Open of 2019 may be his last tournament, due to a long standing hip problem. He was very emotional and this was in the news for 24 hours. This was a tragedy, because his hip surgery has not fully succeeded and he has problems with pain just putting his socks on. He can have another operation on his hip, but this will end his career. The operation is effectively a hip replacement – he is 31 years old.Arguably, he is Britain’s greatest sportsman. Three grand slam tittles and two Olympic gold medals can be used to back up this claim.

Despite being one of our greatest ever sportsman most of the country never took to him. He was a dour Scot, who was no fun, Scotish, and once said that he supported Scotland and anyone who was playing England – boooooooooo! This was ages ago, and he probably wasn’t even twenty years old at the time. The red top papers went after him and the English decided they didn’t like him. They liked Tim “Tiger” Henman, but not the new Scotish fella.

Then one day, Andy was in with a chance of winning Wimbeldon. He lost in the final, cried in an interview and suddenly he was our brave hero! Suddenly, we saw that he wasn’t a machine and had feelings. “We” felt that we knew him now. And a couple of days ago, he cried again.

Thinking about it, he’s very lucky. He’s made loads of money, people said great things about him, and he’ll have a very lucrative future ahead of him. Most people don’t get that. There are many people out in the world participating in sports year after year for the fun of it, or maybe just out of habit. They just get injured and quit. They don’t have the medical support that a professional sportsman has. In that way, I have limited sympathy for him. Where I do have sympathy is the amount of tennis a professional has to play. And over his career he has been praised for his work ethic. This ended his career in the end.

He may make it to this year’s Wimbledon, and limp through a match or two, but he doesn’t need to. He’s the greatest tennis play this county has produced in the open era. But he will be in his early thirties with a hip replacement. And he’s a role model for up and coming young tennis players.