Andy Murray

Short Biography

Andrew Barron "Andy" Murray OBE (born 15 May 1987) is a Scottish professional tennis player, currently ranked world No. 2. He started playing tennis at the age of three, entered his first competitive tournament at age five and was playing league tennis by the time he was eight. He has reached at least the quarter-finals of all Grand Slam tournaments he has participated in since 2011, with the exception of the 2015 US Open. When he was 15, he moved to Barcelona to train at the Sánchez-Casal Academy. He won the Junior US Open in 2004 and turned professional the following year. Murray has been ranked as British No. 1 since 27 February 2006. He achieved a top-10 ranking by the ATP for the first time on 16 April 2007, and reached a career peak of world No. 2 on 17 August 2009.Early and personal life Murray was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Judy Murray (née Judith Erskine) and William Murray. His maternal grandfather, Roy Erskine, was a professional footballer in the late 1950s. Murray is a supporter of Hibernian Football Club, the team his grandfather represented.Murray's elder brother, Jamie, is also a professional tennis player, playing on the doubles circuit. Murray was born with a bipartite patella, where the kneecap remains as two separate bones instead of fusing together in early childhood, but was not diagnosed until the age of 16. He has been seen holding his knee due to the pain caused by the condition and has pulled out of events because of it. Murray began playing tennis at the age of three when his mother Judy took him to play on the local courts. He played in his first competitive tournament at age five and by the time he was eight he was competing with adults in the Central District Tennis League.Murray grew up in Dunblane and attended Dunblane Primary School. He and his brother were present during the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, when Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher before shooting himself; Murray took cover in a classroom. Murray says he was too young to understand what was happening and is reluctant to talk about it in interviews, but in his autobiography Hitting Back he states that he attended a youth group run by Hamilton, and that his mother gave Hamilton lifts in her car. Murray later attended Dunblane High School.Murray's parents split up when he was only 10. He believes the impact this had on him could be the reason behind his competitive spirit. At 15, he was asked to train with Rangers Football Club at their School of Excellence, but declined, opting to focus on his tennis career instead. He then decided to move to Barcelona, Spain. There he studied at the Schiller International School and trained on the clay courts of the Sánchez-Casal Academy, coached by Pato Alvarez. Murray described this time as "a big sacrifice". His parents had to find £40, 000 to pay for his 18-month stay there. While in Spain, he trained with Emilio Sánchez, formerly the world No. 1 doubles player.In February 2013, Murray bought Cromlix House for £1.8 million which opened as a 15-room five-star hotel in April 2014. Later that month Murray was awarded freedom of Stirling and received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stirling in recognition of his services to tennis.Murray began dating Kim Sears, daughter of player-turned-coach Nigel Sears, in 2005. Their engagement was announced in November 2014, and they married on 11 April 2015 at Dunblane Cathedral in his home town. The couple have a daughter, born on 7 February 2016.