When an athlete retires, it is a little death. People start speaking about him in the past tense, as if he were truly gone instead of just moving on to another chapter of his life.

But in a way, athletic retirement is a kind of death. Few occasions remind us so much of our mortality as the thought of a seemingly invincible body now broken down or past its prime. Few engender so many memories and what-ifs, particularly if you identify with the athlete.

Few sports offer that identification the way tennis does. A team like the New York Yankees has a host of players to adore (and, on occasion, vilify). But a tennis match has only four players at a moment at best. And, if you’re a singles player, then it’s just you — and all those people out there who see you in themselves and themselves in you.

Perhaps that’s why the reaction to the retirement of Andy Murray — whom I’ve written much about on this blog and in my other life as an editor at WAG — has been so poignant.

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