Andy Murray. It could have been me. I’m man enough to admit it’s been tough watching the inexorable rise from loose-limbed, awkward teen looking like a puppy pawing at a persistent fly to the hardened, ridiculously talented yet still wonderfully acerbic world No.3 he’s become.

It wasn’t the millions invested. The early whisking away to a Spanish training camp.  God knows, while he was off there Baltacha and I were knocking about more balls than you’d find in a dog castration bin. Then again, when she showed me her balls enough was enough. No, maybe in the end it just came down to ability.

But I’ve managed to come to terms with it. I’ve accepted Murray’s success. I’m happy for him. Yet for others acceptance is not such a simple process.

Murray’s start to Wimbledon has been low-key. Sure Murray Mount, or whatever unimaginative moniker it’s being given this year, has been littered with the usual Pimms-quaffing Home Counties loons. The Union Jacks flutter around the court like some kind of heroes’ homecoming. There’s even been a smattering of kilts. But on the Henman scale of excitement it’s barely registered more than a 2.5.

They still can’t pick out the hero. And you can tell they long for those halcyon lovable-loser Timmy days like that horsey-faced chap’s horsey-faced girl sitting in the players box always seemed to long for his matches to be over.

Murray is an odd one. He’s ironed out most of the idiosyncrasies, albeit with the help of a coach load of coaches, and now has an incredible steely belief. He exudes a real feeling that if this isn’t to be his year, that first slam is not far away. It’s going to happen. It’s all very un-Scottish. Glorious failure isn’t going to define his career. His time as the nearly man is nearly up.

But no matter what he achieves, you can tell for the Wimbers set and the English press he’s never going to fit the job description.

These days all they have to grumble about his manner of winning – his tetchiness and his bicep-flexing – but before he was slaying the world he was lampooned like a petulant child and a dour Scot to an almost racist nature.

Murray might just go on to win this tournament. If he does, you can bet the English tabs will be giving us plenty more And of Hope and Glory headlines. They’ll embrace it and wrap it up in a Union Jack because success still sells. But so does failure and you can tell they’d almost love that even more.

In a way I hope he never wins Wimbledon. I couldn’t give a toss about the years and years of waiting since Fred Perry and you can tell it’s not Murray’s biggest priority either. And the over-the-top, empty Britishness spilling forth would be enough to make you puke on your shoes. It would be like watching your loved one being passed around a room of leering fools with giant tattoos of the Queen and hard ons.

I went to see Murray play in the Australian Open in Melbourne this year. The stadium was a sea of Saltires. I’ll admit at first I was almost slightly embarrassed by the Scottishness of it all, the familiar shouts of “C’mon Andy” that echoed around a far corner of the world after nearly every point.

But then it dawned me. He’s ours. And he’s good. So good, in fact, that we as Scots almost don’t know how to react. And we should be proud.

The Wee Man

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebDht_OtnEw