ANDY MURRAY: BRITAIN'S BEST SPORTING HOPE OR JUST A MALE MODEL?..... So what, then, is grumpy, sullen Andy Murray doing gracing Vogues 726 pages? Sure, he’s very good at what he does, beating Roger Federer at the Rogers Cup final last weekend. And the US Open is coming up. But given that the 23-year-old tends to articulate in grunts rather than words, why have they chosen to interview him over 2,000 fawning words? (The undoubted ''highlight’’ of which is: “I prod him to talk about clothes because I guess he maybe doesn’t think about new trends in menswear all that much. “I don’t, actually. At all.”’) The answer, we must surmise, lies with Simon Fuller, Murray’s manager, and the man who has single-handedly turned David Beckham from simple footballer to multi-millionaire megastar. Yet with Beckham, such a move seemed natural. He had the looks of a boy-band member, was, indeed, married to a girl-band member. Andy Murray – quiet, grumpy, Andy Murray – is a different kettle of fish. He often looks as if he hasn’t washed his hair for weeks, let alone brushed it. What must have Mario Testino, photographer of such uber stars as Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, and Diana, Princess of Wales, made of this hairy, sweaty representative of the British public, whose tie Testino had to do up for him during the photoshoot? We can probably guess from the overtly sexual snap of Murray, which depicts parts that only his girlfriend Kim Sears should ever see. I interviewed Testino several years ago, and he told me that “I work with big performers and try to achieve perfection. But I have come to the conclusion that I now want to go in the other direction. I think perfection is boring.” Testino has continued to produce stunningly beautiful photographs – it is hard for him not to – but with his pictures of Murray, he might finally have achieved that goal of imperfection. They are weird, a bit uncomfortable, not quite right. The boy from Glasgow doesn’t look at home with the razzmatazz of a fashion magazine shoot. And that can only be a good thing. Because it would be a great shame if Murray went the same way as Beckham; if Fuller turned the tennis talent into a global brand whose sponsorship deals outweigh his trophies. Andy Murray is currently the nation’s greatest sporting hope, and for that selfish reason alone, we must hope that in future, he chooses to spend less time in Vogue, and more on the tennis court.
