Wimbledon: a Deficit of Mania for Andy Murray

For Andy Murray, the challenge in SW19 is twofold over the next fortnight.

Never mind becoming the first British man since the long-trousered 1930s to win Wimbledon; could this also be the year a surprisingly volatile and needy British public finally clasps him, unconditionally, to its floral-patterned bosom?

With the fevered Tim Henman years still fresh in the memory, this has become the nagging paradox of Murray's relationship with his home crowd. Wimbledon didn't just love Henman, it swooned at the sight of him every June. And while Murray may be a better player (at 22, he already has more titles), there still lurks a shortfall of adoration, a deficit of mania. Despite more hopeful talk this week of "Andymonium", the picnicking hordes have yet to lose their heads completely over the man from Dunblane.

Why should this be? Some have pointed to Murray's comments in an interview in 2006, when he said he hoped "anyone but England" would win the football World Cup. While he has been at pains to point out he was joking, this is still perhaps ticklish territory for the Henmaniacs.

For Murray, a Scot, really is the most un-British of Brits. His first coach remarked that he'd never seen such an "unbelievably competitive" five-year-old. As a teenager, enraged by inadequate practice resources, he insisted his family move to Barcelona to help him hone his tennis. This is the Murray way: ambitious, unashamedly international and completely bereft of Henman's faint but familiar whiff of the home counties croquet lawn.

Murray is an immeasurably more horny-hided competitor, prone, even, to flaunting his increasingly pumped and beef caked physique. Yet more than this, he seems entirely self-propelling: Murray isn't doing this for Britain, for the BBC, or for the Chablis-frazzled Teddington day-trippers. He's doing it because he wants to win. And really, you've got to love him for it just a little.