VISITORS to the Fever-Tree Championships at Queen’s Club this week won’t just get their first look at Andy Murray for 11 months, they will get the first ever glance at Andy Murray version 2.0.

As he rubber-stamped his return to competitive tennis after the emotional rollercoaster of an 11-month absence from the sport due to serious hip problems, the 31-year-old admitted yesterday that for once he had “zero expectations” of himself as he goes into a grass court season and that he would have to play a different brand of tennis to the one which took him to three Grand Slam titles and the summit of the world rankings. While he would love to return to the top of the game, it “wouldn’t be the end of the world” if he didn’t make it.

So infrequently have the dispatches from the Murray camp been since he limped out of Wimbledon after that painful defeat to Sam Querrey in the Wimbledon quarter finals, that it was instructive to the Scot summing up his situation in his own words ahead of his first-round meeting with his friend Nick Kyrgios at Queen’s Club on

Tuesday.

In what was a revelatory interview – it including nuggets such as the fact

he had been seeing the same hip specialist in Australia for eight years now and had lost two kilos in weight – it seemed appropriate to let the quotes run as he ponders an entirely altered set of circumstances in the summer

of 2018.

Having dropped from World No.1 to No.157 in his time away from the tour, Murray not only has outsider status among a stacked Queen’s Club field this week, but he will have no protection from the Wimbledon draw in a fortnight’s time, and could thus be paired with a first-round meeting against defending champion Roger Federer or any of the other big hitters of the tour.

“Obviously the period after my back surgery [in 2013] took time,” said Murray. “While I was back playing for four months my back didn’t feel perfect for a good nine months after I came back. It will be the same this time. I won’t be pain free and I don’t expect that, either.

“I have had an issue with my hip for eight years, I have been seeing a hip specialist in Australia every year after the Aussie Open. I never expected it to be perfect, but I just wanted to be able to get back to competing.

“I have no idea what happens in

15, 20 years but I’m not going to get a hip replacement in the next 12

months.

“I haven’t played a match for 11 months, so I’ll obviously have to be smart with scheduling in the beginning. I have made big changes to how I train and spend time on the court, and the way I am training in the gym.

“I have taken a load off the body. I put my body under stress for quite a few years. I’ll try to be smart with that. Obviously on Tuesday it will be like another stage in the rehab or the return to play, there are no guarantees about how you’re going to feel after a match.

“I’ll get a good idea after I have played here, the last four, five days I have played a couple of sets, woken up the next day and felt decent, not had any setbacks or been sore, that’s been positive.

“I’ve missed playing, missed competing. I have trained hard and kept myself in shape, I’ve eaten right, not ballooned in weight and gone off the rails. Have I lost weight? A little bit, but not purposely. When I’m competing I tend to eat more, I lose my appetite a bit when I am not competing or training as much, maybe a kilo and a half or two kilos.

“When I start competing again, I will see what works and what doesn’t, get a balance between game style that is effective and will win matches. I could play serve and volley on Tuesday every point, which would be good for my body but unlikely to win matches at this level. It [Kyrgios] is a very difficult match, when his mind’s on it he is one of the best grass court players in the world because of the way he serves and he can play pretty much every shot, but at the same time you’d think not loads of long rallies.

“There maybe is pressure from outside, but I have zero expectations at all, for how I play or how I do right now. I think that’s going to take some time.

“If I drew Federer in the first round of Wimbledon, it would be a difficult draw but also I don’t have huge expectations for how I am going to perform because of how long I have been out. Maybe that will help me.

“I don’t know if I will be losing to players that I used to win against or not. I’ll deal with those situations when and if they come up. In sport, ideally you play to win, but when you have been away from something that you love doing for a year, you kind of realise, I started playing tennis because I loved playing. I didn’t start playing tennis to win Wimbledon or to get to No.1 in the world.

“Look, I would love to get back to the top of the game, absolutely. I train and do all of those things to give me the best chance to do that. But if not, that’s also okay. I just want to be playing again.”