WE shouldn’t be surprised by anything Andy Murray does any more but I thought he showed a tremendous mount of dignity, pride and fight on Centre Court on Wednesday. I have seen a lot of players in that situation just shake hands and get out of there, but he knew a lot of the crowd had come there to see him, and did everything he could. The body just wouldn’t allow him to do any more.
To reach the semi finals in Paris, and the quarters here, and be so close to getting to the semis when he is not fully fit or anything like it just shows how tough and competitive he is. He wants to be out there feeling like that. This tournament is so important to him.
So what now? Obviously I imagine he spent yesterday sitting with his team and talking everything through. They know what the injury is, they will have had the scans done and everything else. That is why he played - he knew he wasn’t going to damage himself any more. The next step is to make a plan. What is your main goal? If it is the US Open, how many tournaments do you feel you need to play to give yourself preparation for it? If that includes the Rogers Cup in Montreal in early August then fine. If not then do something else.
One thing he certainly doesn’t need to do is chase being No 1 any more. He achieved that goal and My God did he work hard to get there. Andy played 87 matches during 2016 and that is an unbelievable amount, especially when you consider the amount of training and preparation that also has to go in to each one. Say a minimum of 45 minutes of treatment, 25-30 minutes of physical preparation, with a hit for two and a half, three hours on non match days. For me, it is more about winning slam titles for him now, being very motivated like he is, at the big events, to win those. In the short term there is one more slam up for grabs this year, the US Open and that will be the main focus this year.
If it is a month off, that is a pretty long time when you have been playing week to week. And it is tough just to do less, when your body is used to doing it. Andy enjoys training, he loves that side of it. He enjoys pushing himself. He likes volume and when you have been doing that for so long he might feel he is undercooked if he doesn’t do it and it might affect his confidence a little bit.
But perhaps he will also see now that he didn’t play that much in the lead-up to Paris and still ended up making the semis, then did something similar at Wimbledon again with a lack of match practice. He might think it isn’t necessary to play so many tournaments all the time. A rest is always good, if not necessarily a break. But I don’t want to decipher it too much. He has lost a tennis match and got injured. Someone will do that within ten minutes of the first football match of the season. Every time something happens to Andy there is so much scrutiny on him that everybody panics, but he gets an awful lot right.
Come to think of it, I know exactly what Andy should do with his schedule. He should just play the Slams and Davis Cup from now on, that would be fine! He should just put them in the diary now and build around that.
It almost goes without saying Roger Federer has to be the hot favourite for this title now. Someone is going to have to play an exceptional match to beat him. Tomas Berdych’s head-to-head isn’t very good against him and he isn’t in the best form so you would have to say that Roger will be good there. Marin Cilic is the other contender, he has won a slam, he can also play from the back of the court and is in good form. But Federer is playing great. And come September, when the US Open ticks round, Andy is one of the favourites for every tournament he enters and I don’t expect it to be any different. Who knows what happens with Novak Djokovic but Rafa Nadal will be back strong and it is a surface everybody plays well on.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here