THE KING OF SCOTLAND

Bruce-like qualities that drove Andy on to never give in... and never give up

DEFEAT, even despair, reveals the essence of a man but there can be clues, too, in triumph as to his character and, indeed, his well-being.

In the caverns of a conference centre in Ghent in 2015, Andrew Barron Murray met the press after one of his greatest victories.

Team GB had won the Davis Cup against Belgium, with Murray providing the broadest of backs to carry the side to victory.

He had completed three matches, scored three victories, accumulated three match-winning points in three days.

His words were generous, humorous and self-deprecating. It was his movement that concerned this observer.

A super-fit man in his late 20s was walking with the gait of a nervous pensioner negotiating an icy path. Was this just the result of extraordinary fatigue or the harbinger of troubles to come?

There is a temptation as Murray prepares to leave the fields of glory to construct the Andy Murray and Me article or the Andy Murray Medical Prognosis.

Both should be resisted. The latter is beyond the competency of this sports journalist. The former falls into the void labelled journalistic ego.

But there is a compelling reason to plunge in another direction. I have followed on Murray’s coat-tails around the world, watched him progress from kid to champion in a personal fog of, first, disbelief and then profound gratitude.

The victories are vivid, almost gaudily colourful even for an observer whose job it is to witness such events with regularity. I may even have learned something.

The honour roll remains in the mind’s eye. The punch of joy, perhaps even relief, at his first Wimbledon, the collapse on the clay of Ghent after that lob against David Goffin, the embrace with Juan Martin del Potro at the net after Olympic gold, the last reminiscent of two prize fighters acknowledging their shared bravery and defiance.

But there was and is much more to Murray than the trappings of glory and the scenes of release on capturing trophy or title.

He won three Grand Slams, two Olympic golds, one Davis Cup and was world No 1 at a time when three of the greatest players ever were swishing their rackets to sublime effect. He was also a champion of fair play, a campaigner for better and more efficient drug testing and a supporter of women’s rights. He backed his words with actions. He was also a quiet, reliable doer of charitable deeds.

But it was in defeat that he showed who and what he was. If one seeks to find a personal lesson in the career of a sportsman, it can surely be excavated from the rubble of dreams destroyed, if only for the moment.

Murray was a winner. But, intriguingly and definitively, only because he was a loser.

Every defeat, every loss endured in the unsparing eye of the public and press, was met by a resilience that could not disguise the bruises and scars of deep personal pain.

There are Scots taking their tentative steps on to the world stage of tennis who will be inspired by his ability to build a point or his technical brilliance, particularly on the backhand, or educated by his capacity to make a demanding physical sport a game of the mind, too, in terms of tactics.

For the rest of us, the Murray legacy may be more difficult to grasp. But it exists. For this camp follower, his greatest trait became clearer with every practice session, every collision on court, every chat across a press-conference table or in a corner of a room.

His strength of character, his stubborn adherence to principle — I contend with some hesitation but with profound sincerity — can be of use to those of us who believe a double-handed backhand was what was delivered up the close by the school bully.

The lesson is this: Defeat is sore but it is an opportunity to reflect, regroup and aspire to be better. This is the sort of trite sentence that cannot convey the true anguish that embraces a human being when encountering loss of any kind.

We know, too, that there are moments in life that make losing a match at Wimbledon or Flushing Meadows seem magnificently trivial. There are times when there is no solace, no consolation. They need no further elaboration.

But there are others when a strength of will or a redefining of attitude can forge a new path in what seems an impenetrable forest of enervating emotion and cloying, negative thought.

Murray was and is the exemplar of that combination of spirit and action.

There are so many examples of this drive. The most conspicuous, perhaps, was witnessed in the aftermath of a crushing three-set defeat to Grigor Dimitrov in the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 2014.

Murray had finished his press conference but, as was his custom, he agreed to meet a couple of British journalists to provide further quotes.

Slumped on a chair, his shirt soaked in perspiration, he spoke quietly and with some hesitation.

He only became fully animated when he declared that he would come back stronger. This may have been a cliché — but there was no doubting his determination to make it become reality.

He kept private the back issue that had been hampering him so as not to diminish the achievement of his opponent.

The subsequent surgery was a prelude to his ascent of the world ladder, ultimately gaining him the world No 1 spot.

His life resounds with such episodes: The disappointments in a succession of Australian Open finals, the hammering by Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2008, the defeat by Roger Federer on the same court in the 2012 final.

He came back from all of them. Indeed, it took him only four weeks to avenge the Federer defeat by thrashing the same opponent on the same court, this time in an Olympic gold-medal match.

His personal life, too, has presented trauma to complement the triumph — the horror of Dunblane 1996, the sorrows of a parental divorce, the trials of being a teenager abroad, without family, in Barcelona.

But his instinct, his very nature, was to overcome. It is no coincidence that his mother, Judy, has a spider tattooed on her back.

It is to celebrate the perseverance of Robert the Bruce, who watched the insect continue to try to spin a web despite all obstacles.

It is a testimony to the character of both her sons, with Jamie also overcoming adversity to reach the very top of his profession.

There will be sadness at the imminent passing of Murray Jr into the ranks of the retired tennis player.

I prefer to pause in gratitude, personally and professionally.

The sportswriter is not supposed to be a cheerleader but it became impossible to separate the character from the sportsman.

Murray gave a nation an absurd dollop of success in a sport where the Caledonian does not normally prosper but he offered the deeper, enduring lesson that failure is not terminal.

Like Bruce, like the spider, like the everyday individual, like you and me, he was knocked down but he got up again. This was and is Andy Murray, King of Scots.