THERE is a select group of sporting achievements that are recognisable as soon as there is mention of the year they took place.

Football and 1966?

England winning the World Cup. Cricket and 1981? Ian Botham’s Headingley heroics in the Ashes. Tennis and 2013? The year Andy Murray ensured there would be a British men’s champion at Wimbledon. Never again will there be mention of 1936 and Fred Perry.

It has taken 77 long years to banish one of the most enduring hoodoos in British sport, and with every tournament that passed, the sense of fatalism, and pressure piled on the next ‘champion in waiting’, increased to almost intolerable levels.

A lengthy list of players proved unable to claim a place in history. The majority fell by the wayside long before they were able to mount a realistic challenge for one of the most prestigious titles in sport.

For years on end, the lack of quality within the men’s game in this country was a source of complete embarrassment.

Then, in 2004, a gangly, floppy-haired 17-year-old from Dunblane won the junior title at the US Open.

Nine years later, and that same player is one of Britain’s all-time sporting greats.

Despite playing in arguably the strongest era of all time in the men’s game, Murray has achieved what few thought possible even as recently as two or three years ago.

Back then, when he was losing successive Wimbledon semi-finals to Rafael Nadal, and Australian Open finals to Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, he was described as a choker, a talented player certainly, but not quite mentally or technically strong enough to claim Grand Slam titles.

How ridiculous that assessment looks now in the wake of three achievements that rank alongside anything achieved by a British sportsman or woman in the post-war era, even taking into account all the remarkable things that have happened in the last few years.

The first of Murray’s key victories came last summer, when he banished the memory of his Wimbledon final defeat to Federer by returning to SW19 to claim the Olympic title.

The virtue of tennis’ place at the Olympics can be argued until the cows come home, but the strength Murray gained from winning gold last August is indisputable. He beat the best players in the world on a stage that really mattered, and to further reinforce what might be attainable in the future, he also proved he could cope with the demands of an expectant British public. The experience has surely been invaluable in the last two weeks.

A month or so after his Olympic win, Murray beat Djokovic in New York to claim the US Open title. A first Grand Slam, a gruelling five-set victory, and further proof of the Scot’s ability to compete as an equal with the very best in the world.

January’s Australian Open final defeat could have gone either way, and while injury denied him the opportunity to compete for the French Open title, Murray arrived at Wimbledon in ideal mental and physical shape.

His campaign was almost derailed at the quarter-final stage, but his athleticism, technique and unbreakable competitive instinct enabled him to overturn a two-set deficit to beat Fernando Verdasco.

The make up of yesterday’s final felt preordained from the moment the first-round balls had been hit, yet there was still a high degree of doubt about Murray’s ability to defeat Djokovic, a fearsome competitor who has eclipsed both Federer and Nadal to establish himself as the world number one.

Was Murray really good enough to see off the Serb?

The answer was unequivocal.

Djokovic played brilliantly, hammering his usual barrage of ground strokes from the baseline, pulling his opponent this way and that, such was the depth of his shot making, and refusing to flag despite the searing heat and raft of rallies that regularly extended beyond the 20-shot mark. Yet Murray outperformed him in every department.

From the opening game, in which he served notice of his intent by carving out three break points on the Djokovic serve, to the dramatic denouement, where he spurned three match points before finally forcing Djokovic to net under the most unbearable of pressure, Murray reigned supreme.

This was a player at the very peak of his powers, with his ground strokes outdoing Djokovic’s when it came to power and placement, the reliability of his hitting remaining unblemished despite the supreme significance of the occasion and his ability to retrieve positions that appeared forlorn redefining the limits of what is possible on a tennis court.

We’ve known Murray was good for quite a while, but the past 12 months or so have made us reassess our judgements about his perceived limits. Suddenly, there simply aren’t any.

Technically, Murray is flawless, with any doubts about the strength of his second serve or the effectiveness of his sliced backhand having been emphatically dispelled. His energy and fitness, which were questioned at the start of his career, are truly incredible.

And mentally, he is now as focused and resilient as any opponent you could care to mention.

Yesterday’s victory propels him into the very highest echelon of British sporting greats. He is a Best or a Botham, a Wilkinson or a Wiggins. For the next halfcentury, we will no doubt be searching for the ‘next Andy Murray’.

And the best thing of all is that there could still be so much more to come.

Given that he only recently turned 26, Murray could be winning Wimbledon for at least the next five or six summers.

For now though, one success will more than suffice. 2013 – the year that British tennis cast off the shackles of the past. Andy Murray – the champion that made it possible.