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.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel