Andy Murray: Aulding it against him.

Andy Murray is Britain's best tennis player by a distance and one of our best prospects to win trophies in the future. The problem for Andy is that many English followers plain and simply don't like him. Despite him never overtly talking about Scotland, he is remembered for making a comment before the 2006 World Cup that he would be supporting "anyone other than England". It was a tongue-in-cheek remark, yet some newspapers labelled him anti-English. Others dislike his attitude and personality, something that also seems to be out of date. When the teenage Murray first played at Wimbledon, he was the opposite of Tim Henman, he appeared insolent and angry, compared to the measured and experienced Henman. Despite his improvement as a tennis player and maturity as a person, he is still pigeon-holed as a dour, awkward Scot; something he hasn't been now for 5 years.

Perhaps there is something else underlying the antipathy. Murray spent part of his childhood in a training camp in Barcelona and recently to train full time in Miami. From the a pithy teenager, he has become one of the fittest and strongest athletes on the tour. Murray doesn't conform to how we want our sportsmen and woman to be: he is reticent, he does not possess the traditional likeable character and nothing in his childhood endears us to his sporting spirit. Even the English have taken to his brother, Jamie, after his romantic coupling with Elena Jankovic (at Wimbledon of course).

If Murray wins a Grand Slam, an honour as elusive in British tennis it will be interesting to see whether he is finally accepted by the British public.