Andy Murray retired after the 2024 Paris Olympics with three Grand Slam singles titles and two Olympic singles golds.1 Wimbledon plans a statue of him for its 150th Championships in 2027.2
Sixteen YouPickBest rankings hold him, and they ask for very different things: the best British player, the best man ever, the best Olympic champion, the best comeback, the biggest what-if. He belongs on every one of them, and the company he keeps changes completely from list to list.
Murray's three majors carry the most weight where the question is narrow, British or grass or Olympic, and the least where it asks about the whole sport.
Fred Perry vs Andy Murray: Britain's greatest tennis player
This ranking sets Andy Murray against every British tennis champion worth naming, men and women, from the Edwardian era to the current tour.
Fred Perry is the obvious rival. He won eight major singles titles, three of them at Wimbledon in a row from 1934 to 1936,3 and for 77 years he was the last British man to win the tournament. Murray ended that wait in 2013.3
Murray's own case is the number next to his name. In November 2016 he became the first British man to reach world No. 1 since the rankings began in 1973.1
The women's side is just as deep. Virginia Wade won Wimbledon in 1977, Dorothea Lambert Chambers won it seven times before the First World War, and Emma Raducanu won the 2021 US Open as a qualifier. Perry's eight majors remain the larger total, which is the best argument against a Murray answer.
Andy Murray vs Roger Federer: the best male player ever
The Top 28 Male Tennis Players of All Time runs from Bill Tilden to Jannik Sinner, and Andy Murray is on it as the fourth man of his own era.
He beat Roger Federer in the London 2012 Olympic final for the loss of just seven games, then defended the title in Rio.1
Federer, Nadal and Djokovic took most of the majors of the 2000s and 2010s, which is why Murray's three titles look small beside them. The case for placing him higher is attrition: he stayed in the top four while the three best players of their generation were at their peak, and he still won majors and Olympic golds.
Andy Murray vs Novak Djokovic: three majors against a record 24
Grand Slam titles are the cleanest currency in tennis, and the list of the 34 greatest men's major champions prices Murray in them.
Novak Djokovic holds the record with 24, ten of them at the Australian Open.4 Murray beat him twice in major finals: in five sets at the 2012 US Open and in straight sets at Wimbledon in 2013.1
Djokovic won the other meetings that mattered, in the Australian Open finals of 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 and in the 2016 French Open final. Eleven major finals gave Murray three titles and eight runner-up finishes,1 which is the arithmetic of playing in the same decade as the record holder.
Andy Murray vs Pete Sampras: the most dominant No. 1 in tennis
The 22 Most Dominant World No. 1s asks for domination rather than a peak, and Andy Murray's time at the top was short.
He spent 41 weeks at No. 1 and finished 2016 there, clinching the year-end ranking by beating Djokovic at the ATP Finals.1 Djokovic has since held the ranking for a record 428 weeks.4
Pete Sampras is the benchmark for the other kind of dominance: six straight seasons finishing at No. 1 in the 1990s. Murray managed it once, and he did it against the three men who owned most of the decade.
Andy Murray vs Martina Navratilova: Wimbledon's greatest champions
This ranking mixes men and women: the 19 greatest Wimbledon champions, from Roger Federer and Martina Navratilova to Murray.
Murray won the title twice, in 2013 and 2016.1 The first final, against Djokovic, was won in straight sets in a match that lasted more than three hours.
Navratilova won nine singles titles between 1978 and 1990,5 and the field also holds Serena Williams, Steffi Graf and Pete Sampras. A two-time champion has to make a case about what the title meant, since the list is full of names with longer runs.
Andy Murray vs Andre Agassi: the best hard-court players
Hard courts decide most of the tennis calendar, so the 23 greatest hard-court tennis players list casts a wide net.
Murray's case starts at the 2012 US Open, where he beat Djokovic in five sets for his first major,1 and runs through the 2016 ATP Finals, an indoor hard-court final he won to finish the year at No. 1.
Andre Agassi won eight majors and all four Grand Slam tournaments, a career Slam that Murray never completed because the French Open stayed out of reach. Federer, Djokovic and Jannik Sinner are the heavy names in the same field.
Andy Murray vs Juan Martín del Potro: the US Open since 2000
The 21st-century US Open list has 14 names, from Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin to Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
Andy Murray belongs because of 2012. He beat Djokovic in a five-set final that opened with a 12–10 tiebreak and became Britain's first major singles champion since Virginia Wade in 1977.1
Juan Martín del Potro has the other kind of claim. He beat Nadal and Federer back to back to win the 2009 title at 20, and injuries then cut short a career that had looked built for more.
Andy Murray vs Serena Williams: Olympic tennis gold medalists
The Olympic list holds 34 gold medalists, from the Doherty brothers in 1900 to Zheng Qinwen in Paris.
Andy Murray won singles gold in London in 2012 and again in Rio in 2016, the only player, man or woman, to win it twice.1
Serena Williams won singles gold in London and three doubles golds with her sister Venus, so she has more medals and Murray has the rarer one. Novak Djokovic added singles gold at Paris 2024,4 the same Games where Murray played his last tournament.
Andy Murray vs Lewis Hamilton: BBC Sports Personality of the Year
This ranking holds 55 winners of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, from cyclists and sprinters to drivers and footballers.
Murray won the award in 2013, after his first Wimbledon title, having finished third the year before. He had already won the BBC Scotland version in 2005.1
Lewis Hamilton won in 2014 and 2020, and the same list carries Chris Hoy, Mo Farah, Bradley Wiggins, Steve Redgrave and David Beckham. A tennis player here is competing for the British public's affection against every sport at once.
Andy Murray vs John McEnroe: the greatest Davis Cup players
The Davis Cup list has 48 players, and Andy Murray's entry rests on a single title run.
In 2015 he led Great Britain to its first Davis Cup title since 1936, beating Belgium 3–1 in the final, and won a record eleven rubbers in the event.1
The earlier British side was Fred Perry's: four straight titles from 1933 to 1936.3 John McEnroe is the measure for the long career, with five Davis Cup wins for the United States and a place in the record books for ties and singles wins.
Andy Murray vs Chris Evert: the greatest two-handed backhands
This ranking judges a single shot instead of a career: 30 two-handed backhands, from Chris Evert to Jannik Sinner.
Murray's backhand was the dependable one, the stroke that held his passing game and his defence together. Evert made the two-hander respectable in the 1970s and won eighteen majors from the baseline.
Agassi, Seles, Nadal and Djokovic also hit the shot with two hands, so Murray's claim rests on reliability under pressure.
Andy Murray vs Stan Wawrinka: the best five-set players
Five-set matches belong to men's majors, and the Top 20 Five-Set Players list is about stamina and nerve.
Andy Murray won his first five-set match at the 2005 US Open after trailing two sets to one, and at Wimbledon in 2013 he recovered from a two-set deficit for the seventh time as a professional.1
Stan Wawrinka has the signature version: a five-set quarterfinal win over Djokovic at the 2014 Australian Open on the way to his first major.
Andy Murray vs Niki Lauda: the greatest comebacks in sport
The comebacks list is about returning from something, and its 34 names include Serena Williams, Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali.
Murray's comeback was a hip. After major hip-resurfacing surgery he returned to the tour and won a final title at the 2019 European Open,1 then kept playing until the Paris Olympics in 2024.
Niki Lauda is the standard for comebacks that sound invented. In 1976 he was given the last rites after a fiery accident on the German circuit, and he was back in a Formula One car within weeks.
Andy Murray vs Nick Kyrgios: tennis's great what-ifs
An honest article needs the unflattering list, and the 27 what-ifs of men's tennis history have a place for Murray.
He reached world No. 1 in November 2016 with three majors already won. Major hip-resurfacing surgery followed, and a career that had peaked in 2016 became a long rehabilitation.1
Nick Kyrgios is the other kind of what-if: a player who beat all three of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic and reached the 2022 Wimbledon final, without becoming the champion his talent suggested.
Andy Murray vs Boris Becker: great players who never won the French Open
Roland Garros is the missing piece in many careers, and this ranking lists 23 men who finished without it.
Andy Murray reached the 2016 French Open final and lost in four sets to Novak Djokovic.1 He had reached the semi-finals three times before that, in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
Boris Becker took six majors but never the Paris title, and Pete Sampras, Stefan Edberg and John McEnroe belong to the same club.
Andy Murray vs Chris Hoy: Scotland's greatest athlete
The last ranking narrows the field from Britain to Scotland, and Murray, from Dunblane, plays here among racing drivers, footballers, runners and a rower.
Chris Hoy won six Olympic golds in track cycling between 2004 and 2012 and seven Olympic medals in all, and he was knighted in 2009.6
Eric Liddell won the 400 metres at the 1924 Paris Olympics after refusing to run the 100 metres on a Sunday. Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart won Formula One world titles, and Kenny Dalglish is Scotland's most capped footballer. Murray's argument is the size of his stage: Wimbledon, the Olympics and a world No. 1 ranking.
What a statue cannot settle
Draw the boundary around Britain, Scotland, the Olympics or one hip operation, and Murray is the main character. Draw it around the whole sport and he is one of four men who shared a generation, with three of them on a different scale. A statue will fix him in place at Wimbledon; these lists will keep moving him around. Each result is built from single matchups, and how every ranking is scored is laid out in full.
A British athlete missing from these sixteen can go into a new ranking of their own.
More rankings, more angles
- Federer vs Nadal vs Djokovic: Who Is the Best? 16 Lists — the three men Murray spent a career chasing
- Sinner vs Alcaraz Rivalry: Two No. 1s, 14 Lists — the pair who inherited his era
- Sampras vs Agassi: Who Is Better? 14 Majors to 8, 14 Lists — the hard-court benchmark from the 1990s
Sources
- Wikipedia — Andy Murray (career, titles, finals, Olympics, Davis Cup, honours): en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-23)
- Sky Sports — Wimbledon to honour two-time champion Andy Murray with statue (24 June 2025): skysports.com (checked 2026-10-23)
- Wikipedia — Fred Perry (eight majors, Wimbledon 1934–36, Davis Cup 1933–36): en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-23)
- Wikipedia — Novak Djokovic (24 majors, 428 weeks at No. 1, Paris 2024 gold): en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-23)
- Wikipedia — Martina Navratilova (nine Wimbledon singles titles, 1978–1990): en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-23)
- Wikipedia — Chris Hoy (six Olympic golds, seven medals, knighted 2009): en.wikipedia.org (checked 2026-10-23)