Murray: Golf caddie role would excite me
Deciding what to do with your retirement is always a conundrum for a superstar athlete, but Andy Murray has come up with a particularly left-field idea. According to his latest magazine interview, he fancies a crack at being a golf caddie.
Murray floated the idea in an interview with Gentleman’s Journal, conducted shortly before he pulled out of the Miami Open last week. Asked to describe his plan after tennis, he said: “I really like golf, so being a caddie, for example, on the golf tour would be something I would find exciting.”
The two-time Wimbledon champion expanded a little on his answer, saying that he would like “to be up close and personal to top golfers – and to learn about another sport like that – and maybe there’s some crossover between the two from the mental side and things, and so you might be able to help a golfer. Or getting coaching badges in football – that’s something that would be fun to do”.
Golf and football were two sports that Murray enjoyed playing as a young sportsman in Dunblane. As a 14-year-old, he was not far from joining the Rangers academy.
There are stories of tennis professionals who have gone on to play golf to an extremely high standard, including Mardy Fish – the former world No 7, who has come close to qualifying for the “other” US Open – and Ivan Lendl, Murray’s own former coach. During lockdown, Rafael Nadal finished equal sixth in the Balearic Golf Championships. Murray’s own ambitions are humbler. “I probably learnt more about what I couldn’t do in lockdown,” he told the magazine. “Anything creative, I am so bad at it.”