ANDY Murray will leave it to the very last minute before making a final call on whether he is fit to return to competitive action at the Fever-Tree Championships at Queen’s Club this week, writes Stewart Fisher. The Scot, who hasn’t featured in any tour-level match since making a painful exit from Wimbledon against Sam Querrey at the quarter final stage last season, decided to sleep on things last night after playing a couple of practice sets at the London venue with Cam Norrie.
The draw for the tournament will be made at noon today and the 31-year-old will wait to see how his body feels this morning and undergo some treatment before officially telling tournament organisers whether he feels fit to play.
Such 11th hour dramas are hardly uncommon when it comes to this recent part of Murray’s career, and the frustrating hip problem which has seen his world ranking drop from World No 1 to World No 157 in the space of a year.
Originally hoping that rest and rehabilitation would be sufficient for the hip problem to ease, the Scot was forced to withdraw at the 11th hour ahead of last season’s US Open and this year’s Australian Open, eventually taking the decision to go under the knife shortly after that latter decision.
After an encouraging training block alongside his young protege Aidan McHugh at the Patrick Mouratoglou Academy in Nice, there was a possibility of accepting wild cards to play in LTA events in both Glasgow and Loughborough, but a setback in his rehabilitation put paid to those plans.
At that point his prospects of appearing on the grass courts this summer at all seemed gloomy but his army of supporters have been heartened by news in recent weeks of the Scot coming through practice sessions on the grass of the All England Club with the likes of Kyle Edmund, Christian Harrison and Francis Tiafoe.
With five wins on his resume, Murray remains the most successful man in the history of these Championships, his last win coming in 2016 - shortly before he claimed the second of his Wimbledon titles. While Rafa Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro have already withdrawn from the event - and Roger Federer as usual wams up for Wimbledon in Halle instead - this is one of the strongest line-ups in the history of the Queen’s Club tournament, with Novak Djokovic accepting a wild card to join the likes of Marin Cilic, Grigor Dimitrov and Edmund on the bill.
While he waits to resume his own career, Murray has continued to work on what comes after - by acquiring clients for his 77 Sports Management Company. Having got the ball rolling by signing McHugh and English sprinters Chereice and Shannon Hylton, Andy recently added teenage English tennis talent Katie Swan to his resume. He has also snapped up Hibs duo Ryan Porteous and Fraser Murray and agreed to a mentorship role with the entire Easter Road academy.
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