When you play sport at a high level, that sport is everything you know. It’s what you think of when you go to sleep and what motivates you to jump out of bed in the morning – the lure of the pitch or track or court. So, as an athlete who dedicated much of my life to playing rugby for England, I have a sense of how Andy Murray might be feeling.
Murray left it until the last minute to make his decision to retire from tennis. Asked what he hoped for from his final matches at Wimbledon this week, he said: “Maybe a bit of closure … I just want the opportunity to play one more time out there hopefully on Centre Court and feel that buzz.” I know that feeling very well. The support from the crowd and the country is like a drug. So, too, is the sense of purpose – the fight to be the best that you can be – and the sense of identity that a career in sport brings. Who are you if not the elite athlete who spends every hour planning and training? Who will he be if not the tennis player that the public know and love?
My retirement in 2011 was the toughest challenge of my England career. After the heartache of just missing out on World Cup glory in 2010, losing 13–10 to New Zealand in the final, I had to finish on something more positive. As the tennis player Anne Keothavong, who retired at 29, said this week: “You want to be able to go out on your terms – you don’t want that taken away from you. You want to know that you’ve left everything out there [and] you don’t have any regrets.”
I knew at the beginning of the Six Nations that I was going to retire, but when I told the squad the evening before our last game of the tournament I could hardly get my words out, such was the extreme emotion. Unfortunately, I was on the bench for most of that game, watching what seemed like the largest clock I had ever seen at the side of the pitch counting down the last minutes and seconds of my England career. Sport psychologists had been ever-present while I was a rugby international, but when I needed help the most, after I hung up my boots, I had to fend for myself.
Since I started playing, psychological support in high-level sport has become more common and more professional. But my conversations with other retirees show that I was not the only one who felt alone and adrift after stepping back from the game. One former Olympian told me she felt as if she had been dropped off the edge of a cliff. I’m told that support for retiring athletes has improved since then, and I imagine Murray will have many plans in place. I hope he is surrounded by practical support to find a path to a new career, as well as much-needed emotional support to help him find that “closure”.
But I now also know that retirement never ends. Thirteen years on, I still struggle with what they call “the change curve”. Initially a model to understand the grieving process (it starts with shock, moves towards denial then plummets through anger and depression), the term is now used widely throughout business and sport to understand and manage change. Eventually the curve heads upwards through acceptance and onwards to integration. I have not made it that far yet.
I’ll be rooting for Murray as he goes through his own change curve – though I’m sure he won’t feel abandoned. In fact, I imagine that tennis will still want Murray, but Murray will need to give himself a little space to decide how much he wants tennis. There will be days when he will want to be right in the middle of it, and days when he will want to be as far away as possible. It will take time to find equilibrium.
After I retired, I found myself wandering back to my pre-England past. During my school days, I played the French horn to a high standard, and I picked that up again after a 20-year break and joined an orchestra. The tennis player Dominic Inglot, who retired two years ago, says it’s a “scary thought … calling time on something you’ve been doing all your life” – but if for the moment you can’t remember what you did before your life became all about your sport, it can help to find a new focus. I climbed a couple of mountains, staggered through a couple of marathons and travelled the world as a volunteer with the amazing Tag Rugby Trust. Then I set up my own company and wrote a book.
Murray will find his way, I am sure. He will be in demand the second he lays down his racket. But he will need to give himself time to find out who he really is, now that he is not simply “Andy Murray, tennis champion”. Retirement can be tough, but he has the strength of character to make the best of it. He has risen to the challenge so many times as a tennis player. I have no doubt he will rise to the even tougher challenge of being a retired tennis player.