Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic played their first matches against each other on indoor courts in early 2001, when they faced off in two European junior events that Murray, in a poor bit of foreshadowing, won in a hurry.
“I think it’s amazing to think they’ve been playing each other since they were 13,” Judy Murray, Andy’s mother and childhood coach, once said.
But the boyhood friends and rivals, now 29, have never been involved in a duel like the one that awaits them in London’s O2 Arena at this week’s ATP World Tour Finals.