Andy Murray’s tennis career ended the way it does for everybody else: a ball that bounced where he didn’t want it to bounce.

After two scarcely believable escapes at Roland Garros, the 2024 Paris Olympics saw off one of the greatest British tennis players in history, as Murray and Dan Evans succumbed to the bruising power of Team USA’s Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul on Court Suzanne-Lenglen on Thursday, 6-2, 6-4.

When it was done, the three-time Grand Slam champion and double Olympic gold medallist gathered his belongings at the side of the court, before taking in the adulation one last time. There were no tears today. He simply holstered his bag, turned to the crowd, and kicked his feet through the orange, pausing to sign autographs at the side of the venue like he had done so many times before. It wasn’t all that special. Special wasn’t particularly the point.

Outranked by two players with ATP titles this season, both inside the top 20, and coming off Wimbledon quarterfinal runs, Murray and Evans were simply made to look inferior after two matches in which they had defied the odds to an almost ludicrous extent.

Murray and Evans had saved seven match points to even reach this encounter, staving off five in a comeback against Kei Nishikori and Taro Daniel of Japan, before fending off two more against Belgian pair Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen. When Fritz and Paul converted their first set point, having not allowed the British pair on the board until they were 0-4 down, things were ominous.

Fritz and Paul played like the third seeds that they are (Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images)

Fritz kicked his first serve into Evans’s single-handed backhand to devastating effect, rather than just hitting his usual flat rippers. He angled a ridiculous cross-court backhand into the tramlines so high up the court that Murray could only tease it into the net.

Paul showed no deflation from his defeat to Carlos Alcaraz in the singles earlier in the day, skittering around the court with the foot speed and balance that make him so dangerous across surfaces, hammering a backhand return too hot for Evans at 1-1 in the second set that earned a break on Murray’s serve and pushed the match over the edge of its already inescapable conclusion.

For Murray, the sense of his ending — the acknowledgement of a career of determination, of maximising everything he could, and of surpassing expectations that were already so lofty when they were set for him by the tennis tradition into which he was born — had come in the two stirring comebacks that led to this bridge too far. It had come in even trying to play one last Wimbledon, scarcely weeks after spinal surgery, and managing to take the court with his brother Jamie.

GO DEEPER

Humour dries the tears at Andy Murray’s poignant Wimbledon farewell

As so many players before him have discovered, and so many more will do in the future, tennis does not deliver graceful endings. The best Murray could do was what he had done — making the journey to get to a Thursday night in Paris at least somehow representative of the near-20 years it capped off.

At 5-2 down, he and Evans even managed to bring up five break points with the kind of against-the-dying-of-the-light tennis that had gotten them to this ending.

Fritz swung a backhand volley wide, then Evans held serve. It wasn’t quite hope, but it was at least something more for Murray to play.

Still, when the ball went long off Evans’ racket one last time, he was ready.

This was just another match point.

(Top photo of Andy Murray and Dan Evans: Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)