Murray: Being a dad helped me become a better tennis player

“Everybody else was at Wimbledon, but I had to look after the dog”, Roy Erskine told BBC 5 Live.

“If I were to put a number on it, I’d set it high and I’d rather fail by setting the bar high”.

“Obviously, there is still a gap to bridge with Novak Djokovic, who is still unquestionably the number one player in the world”. “And because he’s worked with him before, it was easy for him to jump back in and just go, ‘I know exactly what you have to do to win a Slam'”.

Murray was back at the All England Club on Monday morning for another round of media interviews looking somewhat bleary eyed. “He’s been in many finals since then that he wasn’t able to make the most of”.

Murray acknowledges the difficulty of overhauling Djokovic, who has won 17 of their last 20 meetings, but is determined to try to chip away at one of the greatest players in tennis history. They’re all the things I’m trying not to hear during the tournament because there is a lot of pressure and stress.

“All the guys on the team are great and winning the Davis Cup was one of the best moments of my career, and the whole team’s”.

In a game dominated by the likes of Federer, Rafael Nadal and recently by Novak Djokovic for several years now, Murray has seen more defeats that wins.

While his idol Andre Agassi claimed five major titles from the age of 29 onwards, the Scot said he didn’t have a number of slams in mind which would allow him to retire satisfied.

“I wasn’t thinking about that week, maybe Cincinnati or something like that”.

“The Olympics is important to me”, he said. He reached the final by beating seven-time Wimbledon champion Federer in the semifinals. “I’ll make sure I spend a lot of time with them over the next couple of days”.

As well as chasing down Djokovic, Murray feels the birth of his daughter Sophia earlier this year has given him the extra motivation he needed to win more major tournaments. “I’ll give it my best shot to do that”.

After claiming her seventh Wimbledon crown, Serena Williams continues to lead the way in the WTA rankings, with beaten finalist Angelique Kerber climbing two places to second.

There have certainly been encouraging signs over the past few months, and having a home Wimbledon singles champion once more should be another opportunity to grow the game.

The normally aggressive Raonic blamed a passive attitude for some of his problems: “He was playing much better than me off the baseline”. The 25-year old also believes he can do for Canadian tennis what Murray has done for British tennis – set new benchmarks and inspire generations.