British tennis suffered through a worrying lull after the retirements of Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman, before Andy Murray took on the mantle and attacked the elite of the ATP Tour.
Murray’s arrival on the ATP Tour saw him alone for several years in the British tennis scene, where he was, for a long time, the only player of his nation inside the top 100.
He would later be joined by the likes of Dan Evans, Cameron Norrie, and later Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper who all have reached the top 50 of the rankings.
In 2008, Novak Djokovic shared his reasoning for the lack of depth on the British tennis scene ahead of Wimbledon.
Novak Djokovic questioned British tennis star’s ‘hunger’
Djokovic was brutally frank about the quality of Great Britain’s tennis output ahead of Wimbledon in 2008.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Djokovic said: “In the UK a lot of kids are a little bit spoiled. If you have perfect conditions and everything you want, you don’t know the real meaning of tennis and you don’t work as hard as you are supposed to.
Where does Andy Murray rank among the best players in tennis?
“You do not have hunger for success because everything is on a plate. I think you have enough tennis history and enough people who have a big knowledge about tennis who will recognise the problem, and you still have a lot of potential and everything you need.
“You just have to find the right moment and to change the mentality of the coaches and the kids.”
Djokovic fell in the second round of Wimbledon in 2008, while Murray reached the quarter-finals of the competition.
Murray and Chris Eaton were the only two British players to make it past the first round at Wimbledon that year, so maybe Djokovic had a point.
Novak Djokovic did not think Andy Murray was ‘spoiled’
The Serbian might have been heavily critical of British tennis in 2008, but he still expected big things from Murray.
The star predicted that Murray would become ‘a top-five player’, but did warn British fans about the pressure they were pouring on him.
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He said: “But obviously he has so much pressure on him because Great Britain needs a champion, badly, and a Wimbledon champion especially, so they expect him to do that in the next couple of years, and obviously that creates some pressure.
“But, throughout his entire career, he’s been mentally a very strong player, so I can expect that he’s going to come fast to the top five.”
Murray not only became a top five player, but he also spent 41 consecutive weeks as the world number one in 2017.
