Battling Andy Murray does not go gently as curtain falls on career | Alexandra Topping

‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light’, wrote Dylan Thomas in 1947. He could not, of course, have had the extended final act of Andy Murray’s tennis career in mind when he wrote those words. But perhaps he was prescient.

At Roland Garros on Thursday Murray raged, and did not go gently, but after an extended curtain call which produced some of the most joyous moments of the Paris 2024 Olympics, his long goodbye finally came to a close.

Related: Andy Murray’s golden tennis career ends with Olympic doubles defeat

After a series of escapes in these Games which would have made Houdini proud, Murray and his pugilistic doubles partner, Dan Evans, finally succumbed to the American pairing of Taylor Fritz, 26, and Tommy Paul, 27 in the quarter-finals, after the pair lost in straight sets on Court Suzanne-Lenglen.

After this very last of Murray’s last games he exhibited some signs of coming to terms with his retirement, saying that the pain of his most recent back operation at the start of the summer had left him struggling to walk.

“I was emotional because it’s the last time I will play a competitive match, but I am genuinely happy just now,” he said. “I’m happy with how it’s finished. I’m glad that I got to go out here at the Olympics and finish on my terms, because at times in the last few years, that wasn’t a certainty.”

The post match interviews over, Murray couldn’t resist a last joke. “Never even liked tennis anyway,” he wrote on X as the parting shot of the night.

In the past five years the two-time Olympic singles champion, three-time grand slam winner, has repeatedly looked the prospect of his final match in the eye, and refused to blink. In these Games alone the British pair survived a first-round exit by saving five match points against the odds , only to go on and save two more in the second round two days later.

But in a stadium filled – at its close – with the punctured hope of hundreds of British fans, they could not manage a third great escape. Murray’s career did not end with the glory of a fourth Olympic medal for one of Britain’s greatest sportsmen, but with the adulation of the crowd and the gratitude of a country that has delighted in every last moment of this most dramatic finale of his career.

From the moment he walked off court a series of heartfelt, if slightly maudlin, tributes flooded social media . The prime minister, Keir Starmer, noted on X that Murray had won one Davis Cup, two Olympic golds and three grand slams. “But more than that, thanks Andy Murray for two decades of phenomenal entertainment and sportsmanship. A true British great.”

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said Murray was “Scotland’s greatest ever sportsman” and thanked him for “the incredible memories he gave us over so many years”. The LTA used the moments after his defeat to announce that it was “honouring our greatest champion” by renaming centre court at Queen’s as “the Andy Murray Arena” in 2025. “Forever in our hearts. Today, we celebrate an amazing career and legacy,” it said.

At final reckoning it was a comprehensive defeat played out to a half-full arena in which the vocal British fans lived every point with their scrappy idols. The tension was palpable, every point lost accompanied with loud groans; every winner sparking cries of delight into the cooling air as saltires and union jacks were thrust aloft.

The match started with a stutter, with the British pair broken in their first game. When Murray and Evans finally managed a win on serve in the first set, there was a cheer of relief and renewed chants of “Let’s go GB, let’s go” to a refrain familiar to Murray over the years. But the British pair went on to lose the first set 6-2 in just 30 minutes.

As the match entered its second set the British pair’s combined age of 71 – a full 18 years more than that of their American counterparts – began to show, as the Americans paid little respect to the Scot’s valedictory tour. Fritz slammed down relentless, punishing serves while Paul – who had lost to Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz in the singles earlier on in the day – showed no mercy in his rapid-fire returns.

Then at match point at 5-2 – it almost happened again. A match point saved, staccato rallies swung the pendulum from deuce to advantage, before the British pair finally took their advantage, breaking to 5-3. Their blood up, they held serve but the Americans refused to play to the British script and as the sky began to darken, the break they so desperately wanted at 5-4 didn’t come, with their opponents seeing out the match 6-2, 6-4.

Related: Andy Murray retires: ‘I’m glad I got to finish on my own terms … I feel lucky’

After Wimbledon, Murray opened up about his struggle with the prefix “ex”. “I want to play for ever,” he said, after a painful first round exit from the men’s doubles alongside his brother Jamie at Wimbledon. “I don’t want to stop, so it is hard.” Last night there was acceptance that another future was possible, one where he can spend more time being a husband and a father.

“If I went back to the beginning of my career when I started playing in Scotland there’s no one standing here, myself included, [who] would have expected that I would have gone on to do what I did,” he said. “As someone who wants to achieve great things in a sport like this, I look back at things and wish, you know, there’s stuff I’d done differently. But yeah, it’s been an amazing journey.”