FEW sportsmen have raged against the dying of the light quite as fiercely as Andy Murray.
Every other night, we perch like vultures in the press seats of Roland Garros, waiting for Murray’s flame to extinguish after 19 long years of torture and glory.
But the old man refuses to slip away quietly.
At 37, with a metal hip, a dodgy back and strapped-up ankles, Murray walks with the stiffness of a man ready for his pipe and slippers.
And yet he strikes a tennis ball with the belligerence of a man who still believes he could win a fourth Olympic medal, perhaps even a third gold.
It’s a silly idea really, the thought of Murray hobbling up onto the podium on Saturday to have another slab of precious metal hung around his neck.
He is too old. He’s still recovering from spinal surgery. He’s never been much of a doubles player.
And his partnership with reformed hellraiser Dan Evans shouldn’t really work.
But yet Murray and Evans are still standing. Into the quarter-finals. Just two more wins away from a medal.
Murray is one of Britain’s greatest ever sportsmen and also of the most cussed men ever to step on to a tennis court.
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He was cussed as a teenager, cussed at his peak when he was winning three Grand Slams and even more cussed still since his body was broken by the supreme stamina required to play such a cussed, never-say-die brand of tennis.
And he’s not going to change now in this, his final tournament.
Here, on a sweat-soaked Parisian night, Murray and Evans defeated the Belgian duo of Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen 11-9 in a championship tie-break to reach the last eight.
They saved two match points again before Murray’s serve and an Evans smash sealed their progress.
Gille and Vliegen do this for a living. Murray and Evans do not. They are just two blokes doing this for hits and giggles. For an unlikely crack at the gold stuff.
After three Grand Slam titles, including two Wimbledons, a pair of Olympic golds, a Davis Cup, a world No 1 ranking and a total of 46 career titles, Murray seems to have been saying goodbye for quite some time.
There was a tear-stained ‘farewell’ to Murray at the 2019 Australian Open in Melbourne when the organisers assumed he was retiring after his hip surgery.
And Murray was waved off from Wimbledon by Sue Barker in emotional scenes after a doubles defeat with brother Jamie – even before he was stood up by Emma Raducanu in the mixed doubles.
Murray and Evans had saved five match points in their first-round match against a Japanese pairing to stave off the Scotsman’s retirement by another couple of days.
And all day yesterday the raging sun had been beating down on the red clay of the 10,000-capacity Court Suzanne Lenglen.
It was the sort of weather no pale Scotsman would ever wish to venture out in.
But here was Murray limping out once more into the heat of battle.
The place was two-thirds empty but there were a smattering of Union flags and Scottish saltires to greet him.
Soon, Murray was crouching and chuntering at the net as Evans whistled services around his ears.
Evans saved a break-point, the Brits broke immediately, then Murray held – as he’d struggled to do in the first round – and soon he was walloping a frying-pan volley at the net for a 4-1 lead.
Next, there was a thunderous ace from the Scot, followed by some manic fist-pumping. He was enjoying this. You wouldn’t put it past him to change his mind and carry on
As Evans struggled to serve out for the first set, Murray was ricocheting away successfully like something out of a tin-pan shooting alley.
Evans, an emotional, engaging, fidgety man, smashed his racket against the clay at one point late in the first set.
He is desperate to give Murray a fitting send-off and he is making a very decent fist of it.
Of course, this being Murray, the night didn’t go entirely smoothly. The second set was tense, going with serve but only just.
At 4-4, 30-40, Murray crashed an emphatic return winner from a Vliegen serve, Evans thumped a winner of his own but two break points came and went.
SIR Andy Murray is Great Britain's most successful tennis player of the Open era.
After breaking through in 2005 to reach the Wimbledon third round at 18, the Scot was British No1 by the following year.
In 2008 he reached his first Grand Slam final at the US Open, only to fall to Roger Federer in straight sets.
Two more final defeats at the Australian Open to Federer and Novak Djokovic followed in 2010 and 2011 before heartbreak at Wimbledon in 2012.
Despite taking the first set against Federer, he fell 4-6 7-5 6-3 6-4 in front of a home crowd before breaking into tears on Centre Court.
But a month later on the same court he beat the Swiss legend to earn Team GB a gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics.
And weeks after that he broke his Grand Slam duck at the fifth attempt, beating Djokovic in five sets in the US Open final.
In 2013, following another Australian Open final loss, Murray beat Djokovic in straight sets to become the first British man in 77 years to win the Wimbledon title.
Three more losing Grand Slam finals followed, at the 2015 and 2016 Australian Opens and the 2016 French Open.
But in his third Grand Slam final of 2016, Murray won Wimbledon again with a straight sets victory over Canadian Milos Raonic.
He followed it up with his second Olympic gold medal, beating Juan Martin del Potro in a four-hour epic in the final in Rio de Janeiro.
Later in 2016 Murray became world No1 – the first British man to do so in history.
Over his career Murray reached 11 Grand Slam finals, winning three. He won two Olympic golds and a silver (in the mixed doubles alongside Laura Robson).
He will finish his career with 46 titles and over £50million in earnings, making him the fourth all-time leader in earnings.
And – if he can achieve the perfect fairytale ending, as unlikely as it seems – hopefully another Olympic medal in the doubles alongside Dan Evans.
The Belgians started nailing every serve, Murray and Evans flailing at the humid air.
Murray held serve to force a tie-break, with the help of another thudding ace. Then a dodgy line call went in the British pair’s favour as they took early control of the breaker.
Then both Evans and Murray double-faulted. Evans was fully into the Murray routine. Putting the nation through the wringer at any given opportunity.
Eventually, the first tie-break slipped away, with one poor line call sparking a tantrum from both Murray and Evans.
Then the championship tie-break first, in which the Belgians earned two match points.
But on the second, as Murray stared down the barrel, his return of serve forced an error.
And soon he was serving a match point of his own – leaping up and down like a man with a fully functioning body.
It’s all an illusion. It’s all a trick of the light.
A light that never goes out.
