Titanic Murray makes it a perfect day for Britain

[Mr.Karizmatic]

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  Andy Murray of Britain celebrates after beating Milos Raonic of Canada in the men's singles final on the fourteenth day of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London. |AP

How ironic that the man who used to be portrayed as a misery guts has become a national antidepressant in this turbulent summer. Andy Murray's voice might still sound like a 78rpm record played at the wrong speed - that is one thing that will never change. But his feats on the tennis court are nothing short of inspirational.

Against Milos Raonic yesterday, Murray came into his full powers. Tennis fans have spent hours arguing over his weaknesses - the powder-puff second serve, the mental lapses, the tendency to tickle his opponents to death rather than bowl them over. But none of those faults could be spotted yesterday as Murray took the court with his shoulders back and his chest puffed out, in a silent message that told Raonic, "Sorry, mate. This is my turn."

He has been waiting for 11 years for this moment: an opponent in a major final who was not ranked world No?1. "It's obviously an opportunity," he had acknowledged on Friday night as the final line-up became clear. And he seized on it with the eagerness of a starving man thrown a jammy doughnut.

Murray's road to this point has not been an easy one. He has had to grow up in the public eye, with every self-destructive impulse highlighted by a critical media. Over the past few months, though, he has radiated a new sense of inner contentment, helped by his new status as a father. And this newfound balance helped him perform like a titan of the court yesterday, Prometheus unbound.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to Murray was that the match never developed a narrative arc. It even grew a little dull in the early stages of the second set, when he went through a 20-minute phase of struggling with his returns.

Yet the predictability of service hold after service hold didn't bother him. He knew he had the answers to Raonic's heavy-thewed, heavy-serving game. If he needed to go to a tiebreak, that was fine too. He was always in control.

A sense of this can be grasped from the parts of his repertoire that we didn't see yesterday - the dogs that didn't bark in the night. Murray barely used the drop shot at all, kept his lethal backhand up the line under wraps and declined to go for broke on second-serve returns, preferring to build pressure by returning as many balls as possible. Had Raonic hit a seam of inspiration, these were all options he could have fallen back on.

As it happened, Plan A did the job perfectly well.

Murray set out his intentions right at the start. He had two neutral forehands to hit in the opening two games, and they both went for winners - the first inside-out into the tramlines and the second an absolute crosscourt howitzer into the corner. "I thought that he was doing a very good thing of being aggressive when he had the chance," said Raonic afterwards. "Sometimes Andy will let you in the match because he can do so many different things. But every single time he had forehands in the middle of the court he was really trying to hit them, not giving me two looks at a point."

It is a testament to Raonic's fortitude that despite all this pressure he gave away only one break of serve in the match. That came in the seventh game of the first set, traditionally a danger moment as the balls are then at their slowest before the new cans are opened. Even then it required some spectacular returns and passing shots from Murray, notably a backhand whipped past the net-hanging Raonic into the very corner of the court.

Another four break points would come and go without being converted, but there was no foot-stamping from Murray. The Lendl effect - that extra level of self-possession that he only achieves when his coach and mentor is at courtside - was making itself felt, and he only left his carapace of composure twice.

On the first occasion, he launched a volley of swearwords towards his player's box for reasons that remain unclear. ("I was annoyed at something," was all he would say in the interview room afterwards.) On the second, he was celebrating wildly after saving the only two break points that Raonic could generate in the entire match.

Such moments were like daggers to the soul of Raonic, courageous though he was. So was the point when he delivered a 147mph body serve - the second-fastest serve ever recorded at Wimbledon - only to see Murray belt it back like a batsman hooking a bouncer off his eyebrows and then follow up with another scorching backhand pass when Raonic rumbled to the net.

The whole experience could not have been more different to Murray's 2013 victory here over Novak Djokovic, except that in both instances he managed to come through without dropping a set. Then, the agonising climax featured a 12-minute service game that saw Djokovic save three championship points and threaten to turn the whole contest on its head. This time, Murray dominated the third-set tiebreak and concluded the 2hr 48min contest with an inside-out forehand approach that Raonic could only bunt into the net.

The celebrations were different, too. Where there might have been a sense of defiance three years ago - a touch of "at last you bastards can stop asking me when I'll win Wimbledon" - this was more of an emotional release, as Murray sat in his chair and wept. Even the notoriously dispassionate Lendl experienced a teary moment in the player's box.

Murray was so full of goodwill in his victory speech that he saluted John McEnroe for his politeness and sympathised with David Cameron because he has "an impossible job". It was hard to work out which comment raised more eyebrows among his 15,000 admirers on Centre Court. As Britain sinks further into political turmoil, our finest active sportsman has at least given us something to smile about.