Andy Murray must learn to choose his tennis commitments wisely to avoid a repeat of his 2014 ATP World Tour Finals exit, former mentor Sergio Casal has warned.
Murray was beaten 6-0 6-1 by Roger Federer in his Group B match at the O2 Arena last month, which was the Scot's worst result in seven years.
His seventh successive qualification for the World Tour Finals needed a mammoth run of tournaments in Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Vienna, Valencia and Paris - the eventual strain meant Federer needed all of 56 minutes to dispense of Murray.
And Casal, who mentored and coached a teenage Murray during his years at the Sanchez-Casal academy in Barcelona, feels the Scot has to start working smarter in 2015.
Speaking at the academy's visit to York, where it delivered a series of performance player, coach, and adult workshops, Casal said: "He needs to choose well.
"I think he did about five (tournaments) in a row before the World Tour Finals.
"It's difficult to play more than three for these guys. More than three, it depends on the player.
"At the beginning, when you are young, it's good that you play everything - it is the best way to learn.
"At 18, 19, 20 we used to play 36, 37 tournaments. The more you get a better ranking you have to choose little bit. He has to do that.
"He took the risk maybe with that match (against Federer), I don't know what happened."
It has been a transitional year of sorts for Murray, not least with Amelie Mauresmo joining him as coach in June, following Ivan Lendl's exit. In late November, Murray parted ways with long-term coaches Jez Green and Dani Vallverdu, the latter having befriended him as a teenager in Barcelona.
Nevertheless, Casal is confident Murray remains in prime condition to challenge for more Grand Slam titles, despite the pressure that comes from being Britain's most successful tennis player of the Open era.
"These guys play a lot, they play a lot of years at high level with pressure from sponsors, press, the country, and they get tired," Casal added.
"As far as you are getting older, you are fit, but it's tough to recover. From one day to the other one, when you wake up it's different to when you were in your twenties.
"Murray is still very young - 27 is good. He's at his peak.
"You mature well, you don't do mistakes as when you were a junior. He has three, four very good years left."
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 hereComments are closed on this article