Andy Murray will end his Grand Slam hoodoo ... but it won't be at Wimbledon

He is ranked four in the world, he was beaten in the semi-final by one of the greats and he is as wealthy as he could wish to be - a British sporting hero.

As for his miserabilism, well, Murray bowed before and smiled up at the royal couple in their box on Centre Court and he has decided to end his self-appointed exile from the Davis Cup. The boy is trying - so come on everyone, let's not be so hard on him!

But no one is harder on Murray than Murray himself, as we saw at the press conference after the defeat by Rafael Nadal, during which, speaking in a near-inaudible mumble, he seemed at a loss to explain what happened and spoke of the need to work even harder. (Later, he would say that he had been too reckless in his attacking play). Like the Calvinists, Murray believes one can only find salvation and self-purification through extreme hard work.

Yet no matter how much we praise the young Scot's tenacity, talent and work ethic, as well as his plucky performances at Wimbledon, he will continue, on his own exacting terms, to judge himself to be an underachiever - that is, until he wins one of the four Grand Slam titles.
"You can't control what is in your dreams," Murray said before the Nadal match, "but I did dream about holding up a Grand Slam trophy."

Professional golfers like to speak of who among their ranks is the best player never to have won one of the four Major championships. The world's top-two ranked golfers, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood, carry this burden at present as they compete around the world, accumulating money and ranking points without managing to win the tournaments that matter most, the ones that will define them as players long after we have forgotten who won, say, the latest desert classic in one of the Gulf states.

For all his dreams of glory, reality is proving to be more troubling for Murray than perhaps he ever imagined. He knows he is the best tennis player on the circuit never to have won a Grand Slam - and this knowledge is eating away at him.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, he spoke obsessively about not what he has achieved but about what he hasn't. "The last goal I want to try to achieve is to win a Grand Slam," he said.

After Murray lost so abjectly in straight sets against Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open in January, I wrote, in this space, of the all-pervasive influence of Judy Murray on her son's life and game. The bond between mother and son seems unfathomably deep. Judy's presence - thin-lipped, face taughtly held, eyes burning as she implores Andy to succeed - seems all the greater because of the strange absence of Murray's father.

Murray has spoken of how, as a teenager, he channelled the anger and aggression he felt at the break-up of his parents' marriage into tennis and you wonder how much hurt remains.

Does Judy's intense courtside presence unsettle her son during the most demanding matches? Does she ask too much of him and does he try too hard to please her? Or is it, more prosaically, that he asks too much of himself?

Only Murray can answer questions such as these and at present he has more than enough to contend with in working out how to beat Nadal and Djokovic, not forgetting the declining Swiss genius Roger Federer, without submitting to even more, and deeper, introspection.

In January, after the Australian Open, I also wrote of how Murray should learn from the example of Djokovic, the fervent Serbian patriot who had recently led his country to their first Davis Cup triumph, the start of his astonishing sequence of performances which, this year, has seen him lose only one match, the French Open semi-final against Federer.

Djokovic is technically not a superior player to Murray. They are both supremely patient shot-makers, counter-punchers who play from the back of the court and relish hard surfaces. But the Serb is psychologically the stronger, unburdened by the anxieties that seemingly torment Murray.

At present, Murray can only win a Grand Slam in his dreams. That will change. As certain as I was that he would not win this year's Wimbledon, he's destined one day to win the US Open on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows, where he won the junior title in 2004. His decision to play Davis Cup is the right one, too.

Who knows, he might through representing Britain find the kind of inspiration that set Djokovic off on his extraordinary run, which culminated yesterday with his triumph.

Know your limits and quit now, David

Bravado and swagger have taken David Haye a long way in the fight game and have made him rich.

Like Evander Holyfield before him, he is essentially a cruiserweight who through force of will became a heavyweight. But against Wladimir Klitschko, on a wet night in Hamburg, he came up against a true heavyweight champion and deservedly lost his title. It's been said over many years that Wladimir has a weak jaw and Haye boasted before the fight that he would knock out his opponent. It didn't come close to happening.

Wladimir and his elder brother, Vitali, between them now hold all the heavyweight titles. There will be no grand unification fight, however, because they have a non-aggression pact, ordered they say by their mother. Haye is already talking up a possible rematch with Wladimir, the lesser of the two warrior Ukrainians.

More sensible would be for him to accept his limitations and retire gracefully. No one will ever doubt his courage in going in against the giants - or his business acumen.

Jason Cowley is editor of the New Statesman