Competing on the ATP Tour at a time when the Big Three - Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer, dominated was not easy for anyone. Yet, some players managed to be resistant to their dominance and build their own legacy.
Without a doubt, one of those players was Sir Andrew Barron Murray, who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on May 15th, 1987. Andy Murray started playing tennis at the age of three when his mother, Judy Murray, took him to local tennis courts.
Soon when his talent became apparent, Murray moved to Barcelona, Spain, to train at the Sánchez-Casal Academy under the guidance of Pato Alvarez and with former doubles world no. 1, Emilio Sánchez.
Murray showed a lot of promise already in juniors, having won the 2004 Boys' US Open. Already next year, in 2005, he took tennis professionally, and not long after that, in 2006, the Brit won his first ATP title, beating Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt along the way.
In 2007, Murray reached the Top 10 in the ATP Rankings, and in 2008, he played his first Grand Slam final at the 2008 US Open, eight years after he won the Juniors' title at Flushing Meadows.
He then played three more major finals, two at Australian Open and one at Wimbledon, before finally winning his first Grand Slam at the 2012 US Open. It was the same season when Murray won the gold medal for his country at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
In his long career, Murray played 11 Grand Slam finals, and nearly every time he played in the Grand Slam final, he played against either Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic. The Brit lost to Federer in all three major finals that they met in, and he has a 2-6 record against Djokovic. The only other person he played in a Grand Slam final was Milos Raonic, who he defeated at Wimbledon in 2016, where he won his last major.
In the same year, Murray also won his second gold medal at the Olympic Games, and he also reached the world no. 1 spot and finished his best-ever season as the top-ranked player on the men's tour.
Soon after that, Murray's career took a big U-turn, as he was forced to undergo multiple hip surgeries, and he could never return back to his top level again, despite showing why he's regarded as one of the best players of the 21st century multiple times.
