There is one, clear, obvious reason why Great Britain's Andy Murray was vanquished by Serb Novak Djokovic last Sunday in the final of the Australian open, and it has nothing to do with skill level. As it stands the world's four best players are: Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Robin Soderling. The four share much common ground with Murray - they are all talented tennis players, they are all European, they are all white etc etc - but there are two key areas where these four diverge from Murray: they all come from countries that begin with the letter S, and Murray does not.
Spain, Switzerland, Serbia and Sweden - can it be a coincidence? Those four are basically all the decent countries that begin with 'S'. I don't think Somalia, Saudi Arabia or Samoa are ever going to produce players that will have the privilege of sweating, swearing and smashing their racquets in front of the Queen on the pristine lawns at Wimbledon, somehow. As for Slovakia, well, I'm not even going to go there. Since 2004 the only two nations to break the 'S' quadropoly are Russia and Argentina, with three between them. That's three out of twenty-seven, by the way, truly crushing dominance.
The tragedy for Andy Murray is, of course, that he's Scottish - yes, another country that begins with S. Why then, hasn't he won a Slam? Because he is forced to compete under the cursed flag of Great Britain. You have to go back to 1996 with Boris Becker of Germany to find a Grand Slam winner under the letter 'G'. There can be no other reason, though it most certainly is another reason for Murray to be angry with the English.
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