Novak Djokovic's classy tribute to Andy Murray was a fitting way for their rivalry to come to an end, writes IAN HERBERT... the Serb played a small but significant part in the Team GB star's Olympic farewell

Somehow, it felt as if the theatre of Andy Murray’s last goodbye was divinely ordained.

As the man who had so raged against the dying of the light stood to discuss the curtain falling, the heavens opened. You had to strain to hear him speak as the rain crashed against of the roof of the building, across the way from Court Philippe-Chatrier, and after he’d spoken, quietly and elegantly for 15 minutes or so, there was an almighty thunder-clap before lightning illuminated the place. Yes, it seemed like divine intervention, decreeing that this man would not go gently into the Paris night.

Yet there was something even more beautifully unscripted amid this elemental sound and fury. As fate would have it, ten minutes or so before Murray arrived in the mixed zone in the back corridors of Roland Garros, Novak Djokovic walked through that place. 

Had Murray, with Dan Evans, not engineered a late break of serve in a final act of defiance against their American opponents, he and his old rival would quite possibly have arrived there at the very same time.

Djokovic has had his detractors. He can be a difficult, intolerant, over-sensitive man, unwilling to suffer fools where he thinks he sees them. His strange assumption that Wimbledon supporters were booing him briefly made him the pantomime villain at Wimbledon a few weeks back. His refusal to vaccinate during Covid - he believes in other therapies - was not generally well received.

But few who were there in that small space on Thursday night, when Djokovic was asked to offer a personal assessment of Murray, will ever view him in quite the same way again. The words he found - about the ‘warrior’ spirit in Murray which had inspired him and about how their rivalry was his ‘longest’ - were so moving in its conviction and spontaneity. What class.

Djokovic recalled there was just a week’s difference between them in age (Murray is just the elder) and that they’d been 11 years old when they first competed. (A junior tournament in Tarbes, seven hours south of Paris, where Murray won 6-0, 6-1.) ‘We shared many good and tough moments on the court, off the court as well,’ he said. ‘We go back a long time. Hopefully we will be able to connect off the court as well, with families, when it settles.’

It was an appealing image - the two of them, perhaps five or ten years from now - reflecting back on what has been an extraordinary era for tennis. For now, the sight of Djokovic, lithe and so mobile, made you grieve just a little more for Murray, his contemporary, limping through this mixed zone, describing the state of constant pain he had been in to make this last goodbye and leave on his own terms. The court on which he and Evans played was only half full because Djokovic, playing and beating Stefanos Tsitsipas, was a far greater draw.

And for all that, there were thoughts of the best of times, too. Djokovic’s presence was a fitting reminder of surely Murray’s greatest moment - the July day 11 years ago when he won Wimbledon for the first of two times, defeating the Serb to do so.

Someone tried to put Djokovic’s words of tribute to Murray, inviting a response, but in the melee and the hammering rain, a louder questioner prevailed and the moment was lost. No matter. Djokovic’s words spoke for themselves. His small but significant part in Murray’s last night will always be remembered.