LONDON >> From the lawns of Wimbledon to the lochs of Scotland, all of Britain can celebrate.
Andy
Murray made it possible Sunday, winning his country's hallowed tennis
tournament to become the first British man in 77 years to raise the
trophy at the All England Club.
Yes, this
was history, and Murray's 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 victory over top-seeded Novak
Djokovic was a fitting close to nearly eight decades of British
frustration in its own backyard: A straight-setter, yes, but a
hard-fought, 3 hour, 9 minute affair filled with long, punishing
rallies and a final game that may have felt like another 77 years, with
Murray squandering three match points before finally putting it away
after four deuces.
On a
cloudless, 80-degree day on Centre Court, Murray put his name beside
that of Fred Perry, the last British man to win Wimbledon, back in 1936.
That sentence doesn't have to be written again.
The
second-seeded Murray beat the best in Djokovic, a six-time Grand Slam
winner known for both a mental and physical fitness built to handle what
he faced Sunday: A crowd full of 15,000 partisans rooting against him,
to say nothing of Murray himself, who, since falling to Roger Federer
in the final last year, had shed some baggage by winning the Olympic
gold medal on Centre Court, then following that with his first Grand
Slam title at the U.S. Open.
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