Glory can spark more success: Andy Murray

Britain’s Murray believes Olympic triumph is the stepping stone

LONDON: Britain’s Andy Murray believes his Olympic triumph in the men’s singles event will provide the perfect springboard to break his Grand Slam drought.

Murray produced the performance of a lifetime to win his first Olympic gold medal with a crushing 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 demolition of world number one Roger Federer in the men’s final on Sunday at the centre court of Wimbledon. The 25-year-old Scot’s astonishing display avenged his heart-breaking Wimbledon final defeat against the Swiss maestro Federer last month, but more importantly for Murray it provided concrete evidence that he can win these kinds of high-stakes encounters with the best players of the world.

Murray has been beaten in four Grand Slam finals and some suggested the world number four was destined to be remembered as a nearly-man who fell short of the standards set by Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. But the win was the perfect preparation ahead of the US Open later this month.

“It will help with the way I go into this kind of a high-profile match,” said Murray. “Come US Open time I hope this victory will have given me the confidence I need to go in there and believe in myself a bit more. I have lost some tough matches in the past and I’ve had a lot of questions asked about me many times. So I’m just glad I managed to put on a good performance I’ve been waiting for.

“It was quite a strange feeling for me because after the Wimbledon final I was really so overly emotional, not only after I left the court, but for the next couple of days after the match. This time I felt surprisingly calm during and after the final.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 7^th, 2012.