Celebrating the career of Sir Andy Murray
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Today we paid tribute to the incredible career of Andy Murray following his retirement from professional tennis.
Born on 15 May, 1987, Murray burst to prominence winning the 2004 US Open junior singles title and the following summer, made his Tour-level debut as a wild card entrant reaching the third round of both Queen's and Wimbledon, captivating the attention of the nation, where he has firmly remained during the last two decades.
Andy set many records during arguably the most competitive era in men’s tennis, including winning three Grand Slam singles titles, two Olympic Gold medals, leading his country to Davis Cup success and achieving the world No.1 ranking.
We are committed to working with Andy and the Murray family to ensure that his career is suitably recognised. As part of this the LTA have committed £5m to support Judy Murray’s plans to build a tennis centre of national significance for Scotland at the Park of Keir, near Dunblane. We are also working with Government and other partners in ensuring Andy’s achievements and his legacy will benefit future generations for years to come.
More immediately we are today announcing that from 2025 the centre court seating arena at the LTA’s London Championships held at The Queen’s Club will be known as ‘The Andy Murray Arena’.
Andy has a special relationship with the tournament, having won the event more than any other in his career, and more times than any other player in the Championships’ 123-year history. The new name for the arena will be used at both the WTA 500 and ATP 500 events to be held at the venue from 2025.
LTA Chief Executive, Scott Lloyd said: “Andy is the greatest tennis player ever to come from this country and a giant of British sport. His contribution to the game is immense and has bought us all so many moments of pride. He was relentless in his pursuit of excellence and had a single-minded determination to succeed.
"His brilliance on court bought to an end the long wait for a British male singles winner at Wimbledon, brought home Olympic gold and silver medals and he was the driving force behind Britain’s 2015 Davis Cup success.
"Anyone who ever saw him play knows he put his heart and soul into his performances on the court. His incredible work ethic and love for the sport was demonstrated by his repeated returns from injury, when many others would not have had the resolve. Perhaps equal to his on-court success was his attitude in championing equality and diversity right across the sport. He is a special role model for tennis in this country and beyond and a unique champion.
"We are proud to name the arena at our tournament at the Queen’s Club after him. We are committed to delivering an infrastructure legacy working with Judy Murray on the Park of Keir project, a new tennis centre of national significance for Scotland and for its local community. We are, of course, keen to continue to work with Andy in the future, in whatever capacity he wishes - as British tennis is all the stronger for him.”
Andy is the greatest tennis player ever to come from this country and a giant of British sport.
Andy Murray career highlights
- Finished with 46 ATP singles titles and 3 ATP doubles titles. His most successful event was the cinch Championships at the Queens Club, winning on five occasions between 2009-2016.
- He won his first Olympic singles Gold medal at London 2012, defeating Djokovic and Federer in last two rounds. At 2016 Rio, he became the first tennis player ever, male or female to win consecutive singles Gold medals at different Games.
- At the 2012 US Open, he broke a 76-year Grand Slam singles title wait for British men, winning the US Open in five sets over Djokovic, joining four women in the open era who have accomplished that feat: Virginia Wade, Ann Jones, Sue Barker and more recently Emma Raducanu.
- In 2013 he became the first British man in 77 years (since Fred Perry in 1936) to win the Gentleman’s Singles title at The Championships at Wimbledon, defeating Novak Djokovic in the final 6-4, 7-5, 6-4, before the largest national television audience of the year at 17.3 million representing an 80% share of TV viewers.
- He won Wimbledon again in 2016 and became the first British player male or female to win the singles more than once since Perry’s hat-trick in 1936.
- He has had an impressive record against the ‘Big Three’ of men’s tennis: Eleven (11-25) wins over Djokovic, including two in Grand Slam finals, Murray led 2-0 on grass and they were tied 5-5 in finals at ATP Masters 1000 level; against Federer, Murray also won 11 times (11-14) including a 6-3 edge at Masters 1000 level; against Nadal, Murray won seven times (7-17) and held a 3-1 edge in their lifetime career singles finals. Murray was also the only player to defeat Nadal more than once on the Madrid clay.
- In 2015, he led Great Britain to its first Davis Cup title in 79 years. Winning 11 rubbers during the year.
- Named BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year three times in four years (2013, 2015-16) – the only athlete ever to win three times, and the ATP player of the year in 2016 and ITF World Champion in 2016.
- In 2016 he finished the greatest season of his career with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Djokovic in the ATP Finals in London winning five tournaments in a row to finish the year as world No.1. He held the top ranking for 41 weeks from 7 November 2016 until August 20, 2017. This was the only time between 2004 and 2021 that the year-end ranking did not belong to one of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal.
- He is an 11-time major singles finalist with five at Australian Open (between 2010-16), one at French Open (in 2016), three at Wimbledon (2012-16) and two at the US Open (2008 & 2012); he only ever lost to Djokovic or Federer in Grand Slam singles finals.
- He became the youngest person to be knighted in modern times, at the age of 29 in the late Queen’s New Years Honours list for 2017.
- He was British No.1 for almost 12 years from July 2006-March 2018.
- He returned from career-threatening injury and two hip surgeries in 2018 & 2019 to win his 46th ATP singles title in Antwerp over Stan Wawrinka.
The professional game in Britain is far healthier as a result of Andy’s inspirational achievements.
At some points in 2013 Andy was the only British man ranked inside the world’s Top 250, just over 10 years later in July 2024 there have been 12. In the last two years we have seen five men in the Top 100 at the same time for the first time since 1978, and four male players in the Top 50 for the first time in history.
On the women’s side, no woman had cracked the Top 20 since Jo Durie in 1984, but in 2017 Johanna Konta reached No.4 in the world and four years later Emma Raducanu ensured that Britain joined Spain, Russia and Italy as one of only four nations to produce both male and female Grand Slam singles winners from the same country during the last 10 years.
Grassroots participation has also increased significantly in recent years. Over 10% of the adult population of Great Britain, 5.6m, now play tennis at least once a year, a figure that has risen by 40% since 2019.
The number of children playing tennis annually stands at a massive 40% of the population, with tennis one of the most gender balanced sports. Over the past six years there has been growth in participation across both men and women, all age groups, and in regular monthly and recreational annual play across all five LTA English regions, Scotland and Wales.
In Scotland, from January 2019 to March 2024 adult annual participation grew 19% to 374,000, whilst adult monthly participation, over the same period, doubled. Since the LTA started recording children’s participation in this way in 2020, in Scotland the number of children playing annually has grown from 223k to 275k – a rise of 23%. Scotland also has the highest percentage of schools in Britain that deliver the LTA’s programme for children, LTA Youth.
Following today’s news, we are putting in place plans to commemorate his wide-reaching contribution to the game in this country.
Further details of current recognition projects:
- From 2025, the arena at the LTA’s London Championships at The Queen’s Club will be renamed ‘The Andy Murray Arena’ in recognition of his record five titles at the venue.
- We are committed to investing £5m in a new tennis centre of national importance at Park of Keir, near Murray’s hometown of Dunblane. The project led by Judy Murray will deliver a multi-sport site including outdoor tennis courts, outdoor padel courts, indoor tennis courts, pickleball courts, a multisport hall, multi-use games area, gym, and cafe. The intention is that the community centre becomes a flagship tennis venue in Scotland, which can act as a home for competition and player training alongside Judy’s programme to encourage greater participation in sport and build a workforce of community coaches.
- We will also continue his legacy to the game through the LTA Youth programme that was developed from the ‘Tennis for Kids’ scheme launched after Murray helped Great Britain to Davis Cup victory in 2015. LTA Youth is the LTA’s innovative junior programme created to help more children enjoy the benefits of playing and staying in tennis, whatever their age, gender, disability or background. We have already rolled out the programme to over 13,000 schools around the country with over 22,000 teachers trained to deliver it.
Details of further projects will be announced in due course.
