Tennis ace Andy Murray reckons he is too young to be knighted.
The super star new king of tennis laid further claim to be Britain’s greatest ever sportsman by finishing the year as world No 1 following his win over rival Novak Djokovic.
Fellow Olympic gold medallist Chris Hoy was knighted in 2009 and Bradley Wiggins received the same honour in 2013.
But Murray, a Davis Cup winner, twice Olympic champion and a three-time Grand Slam winner who was awarded the OBE after winning Wimbledon in 2013, insisted he is not yet ready to walk out at the Australian Open in January as Sir Andy.
“Obviously it is the highest honour you can get in this country,” said the 29-year-old. “I don’t know, I feel like I’m too young for something like that.
“Would I feel slightly uncomfortable? Yeah, possibly. I don’t think about that stuff much, really.
“When I win any award or am presented with anything it is nice because it is recognition for what you have given your life to, up to now anyway.
“I am still young and there are still a lot of things that can go wrong, I could still mess up and make mistakes, do stuff wrong. I am just trying to keep doing what I am doing, working hard, and achieving stuff.”
The Scot is odds-on favourite to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year for a third time. But Murray will not be at the awards night in Birmingham on December 18 because he will already have started preparing for next season.
“I’ve got my father’s stag do next weekend, then he is getting married the following weekend,” he said.
“So I will go up to Scotland on Saturday and come back down to London for four or five days then come back up to Scotland. Then I go to Miami the day after my dad’s wedding.”
<>Asked about the public vote for Britain’s top sports star, Murray said: “The Brownlee brothers, what they have done throughout the whole year is pretty amazing and I see that as pretty cool because I have a pretty similar thing with my own brother.“Obviously the thing that happened a few months after the Olympics was pretty cool and a nice thing to see as well, that it is not just a win-at-all-costs mentality.”
Murray, who revealed he watched the light-heavyweight clash between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev before knocking out Djokovic, is set to continue his battle for No 1 with the Serb next season.
Murray’s former coach Brad Gilbert said: “I only see two players competing for world No 1 in 2017: Novak and Andy.
“In 2018, maybe youngsters like Alexander Zverev or Nick Kyrgios will be in the mix. But not next year.”
The Scot insisted: “I have enjoyed the last five, six months the most I have in all of my career. That is probably because I have won a lot so I want to keep going.”
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