Serve, Volley, Disillusion in Sw19

The question, as usual, is whether the centre court was half full or empty? Enter (from Dunblane by way of Barcelona training school) a new British sporting prodigy amid exceptional ecstasy. Advantage UK. Then wham, bang! No-thank-you man. And the fourth richest nation in the world, mounting the richest tennis tournament of the lot, has nobody left to play for a second week. Deuce.

We can all do the Braveheart bit, of course. Sean Connery mugging like fury in the stands. ("Vote Andy, vote Nat.") Every available Olympic gold medallist on patriotic show for the cameras in full Chariots of Fire mode. The Scot family Murray blanketing the airwaves: not just supermum Judy with her tremulous smile, but dad Willie with his clenched fists and pent-up belligerence (and never forget dear old Gramps back at home, minding the shop).

Failure doesn't come much better than this. Yet failure is still the operative word.

That's not Andrew Murray's fault. He's an odd mix of Eminem and John Gordon Sinclair, and you can see his father in him when he snarls, but he plays a mean, moody game of tennis. He's part of our sporting life for the next few years. What he surely isn't, alas, is a future Wimbledon champion.

Three reasons. One is the way he lost on Saturday, just as he lost at Queen's before: with a trudging ache of exhaustion. If you're tired and cramping after two sets on a cool June afternoon, then you'll never stay the course through to a final. He's only 18, they say: still a growing lad. But Maria Sharapova is only 18, and defending champion, and Rafael Nadl, the French open champion, was 18 when he began his Roland Garros run a few weeks ago.

Only 18? Maybe a fitness drive would help. Maybe Judy's favoured preparation diet - "Celebrity Love Island and a Pizza Express delivery of bruschetta and chicken pizza", she tells Telegraph readers - could be sharpened up. (Her "chocolate cream frappuccino, a cross between a milk shake and a knickerbocker glory" sounds like a cholesterol panic attack waiting to happen.) Nevertheless: if you're tired at 18, you'll probably be exhausted at 23.

But fatigue, remember, is much more than a twinge in the thigh. Fatigue is the killing weight of expectation; and that burden is another good reason for fearing the worst. The real enemy, yet again, is Wimbledon itself.

A Croat, Chilean or Ukrainian may come to the All England Club in obscurity and prosper far from home. Any modestly promising British competitor, by contrast, is an instant victim of that vacuous middle-class hysteria honed over decades by the BBC. Goodbye Tiger Tim with your impossible dream: hello Murraymania on Murray Mount (aka Henman Hill) as you strive to make a Murray mint.

The stands fill with strange creatures daubed in red, white and blue: a Ukip convention on the terraces at West Ham. It's as though, in this genteel world of strawberries and corporate cream, there's a licence to turn yob for the duration, to howl and heave in orgasmic nationalism.

Is it like that in Paris or New York? A little: but nowhere near so intense. Even George Bush's super-patriot crowds can't compete with our decades of stored frustration. And that, in turn, seems to drain the energy out of the chosen gladiators. Time to stop sweating and settle. It is enough, apparently, to be there for a few seasons, to make a headline or three, to be recognised at the gate by an autograph groupie. Whereupon the after-life beckons.

If you're Andrew Castle, you sit on the GMTV sofa with Fiona. If you're Chris Bailey or Sam Smith or John Lloyd, there's a seat in some TV box and a pay cheque waiting. If you're Jeremy Bates, you're in charge of administering things. The name of this game isn't winning. It is, rather, making a brief splash then joining the commentariat. There is no penalty for failure. How long will it be before Henman inherits his microphone and committee seat?

Wimbledon, in short, has become a bland conspiracy of guaranteed disappointments. It expects too much and settles for too little. It demands only a brief spell of striving on the circuit before cash and comfort arrive. Russians may be hungry and driven as they make it from the depths of Siberia, but Surbiton offers no such incentives. The great nostrum of New Labour political life - that extra investment equals success - doesn't operate here. Each year the All England ploughs its fat profits into the British game: and each year there's nothing to show for it at the grassroots. Catalonia does it better, as Andy Murray found out.

And the third reason not to get too hopeful about the young blade of Dunblane? That's Wimbledon again, the surface reason. Murray might do pretty well on clay: it fits the slicing, probing rhythm of his game. He may make a name on the predictable Deco Turf of Flushing Meadows one day.

But grass is not his natural environment, just as it is not the natural environment of most of the world's greatest players. Two weeks of warming up, two weeks in south London, and that's your grass-court season over. Anomaly time. The players who love Wimbledon most - like Henman - never quite muster the strength to succeed elsewhere. The players who Wimbledon's crowds now love most - like Murray - will do best hundreds of miles from SW19.

It's a dream we all ought to dub impossible now, a familiar serve, volley and grunt of disillusion. But never lose hope entirely. Could Murray win the French Open? Yes, if he knocks off the pizzas and crappuccino. Yes, if he toils some more at Barca. Advantage L'Ecosse. That would be a knickerbocker worth its weight in glory.