Andy Murray is the greatest British player in the Open Era and quite possibly one of the greatest ever, and he deserves a statue at Wimbledon, according to John McEnroe.
Although the British player has ‘only’ three Grand Slams, which don’t look that impressive compared to some other legends, everything about his career has to be viewed through the lens of the Big Three.
He spent all of his career in the shadow of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, even though he joined them for a while to form a ‘Big Four’. Those three that he had to battle are three of the most legendary tennis players ever, so the sheer amount of achievements he accomplished while playing and competing with them is astounding.
He won three Grand Slams but played in eleven finals. He won 14 ATP Masters 1000 trophies out of the 21 finals he played. He also won 46 trophies overall out of the 71 finals he played.
Finally, he won two gold medals at back-to-back Olympics in 2012 and 2016. All of that happened in the Big Three era, and that’s why John McEnroe argued for his statue at Wimbledon.
“If I was making that decision, I would say absolutely, yes, because that’s a long drought, 77 years. He’s absolutely changed the way people look at British tennis. He’s one of the greatest competitors that I’ve ever seen play tennis.”
We’ve seen statues at events before, Rafael Nadal’s at Roland Garros being the most notable one. According to the former player, Murray deserves a statue at SW19, but right now, he is hoping to get a chance to say goodbye to the event standing up because his participation is uncertain.
“It would be well deserved, and it’d be awesome, because two of his three grand slam wins were at Wimbledon plus the Olympics. So that would seem to make a whole lot of sense.”
