The shops in Dunblane's cramped High Street had a trickle of Monday afternoon business and the Chinese restaurant did not have many takers for its business lunch. But if there was not exactly an excited crush, this was a little town where expectation hung heavy in the air.

Dunblane raised Andy Murray and a community was primed to watch every shot on television last night when its local hero set out to become the first British man to win a grand-slam singles title in 72 years.

A crowd crammed into the café of the Dunblane Centre, the most striking new building in town, which was built with money gifted by wellwishers from all over the world after the murders committed by Thomas Hamilton 12 years ago. Normally the centre is a youth club, but young and old squeezed into the best seats to watch Murray's match against Roger Federer, of Switzerland, in the US Open final. Every point from Flushing Meadows was shown on a drop-down projection screen, with soft drinks and tins of beer fuelling the crowd through a nerve-shredding night.

Andy was an eight-year-old at Dunblane Primary School on the day in March 1996 when 16 infants and their teacher were shot dead. Nora Dougherty, one of the centre's trustees, acknowledged the importance of Murray's feats. “We're very proud of what we've achieved at the centre, it's a living tribute to the kindness we were shown from people around the world,” she said. “But we are also very proud of what Andy has done. He has worked so hard to get where he is - the way he's playing now marks him out as truly world class.”

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Even a town as small as Dunblane, with a population of 7,900, offered a choice of venues from which to follow events in New York. In the Dunblane Hotel a crowd of regulars have toasted Murray through every late-night round of the US Open. The landlord, Tom McLean, had the champagne on ice by the bar before the start of the final. There were a couple of Saltire flags pinned to a wall - a hangover from Scotland's football World Cup qualifying match against the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia last Saturday - which brought to mind Murray's vow to support anyone but England during the football World Cup two years ago. However, McLean knows Murray and said that he is British through and through.

“All of that stuff about Andy and Scotland has been taken out of context - you'll see the Union Flag draped around his shoulders tonight,” he said. “And we'll be cheering him all the way.”

In sport, of course, not everything goes to plan. The Dunblane Centre's café was packed to the rafters for Murray's quarter-final at Wimbledon this summer. On that occasion, he was beaten in straight sets by Rafael Nadal, the Spaniard whom Murray defeated in their US Open semi-final on Sunday night. “There were no tears, but there was disappointment and a real sense of anticlimax when he lost at Wimbledon,” Dougherty said.