Murray out but not ready to say goodbye
The Australian Open, it would seem, retired Andy Murray before Murray had actually decided to retire. How awkward. “I want to keep playing tennis,” he said after losing an emotional first-round match in Melbourne on Monday. “Maybe I’ll see you again.
“But if today was my last match, it was a brilliant way to finish.”
If. Maybe. After the five-set loss to Roberto Bautista Agut, Murray was subjected to a tribute video, with other tennis stars wishing him good luck in his retirement. Again, how awkward.
For Murray, always an athlete swimming in a sea of self-doubt and selfrecrimination, this confusion shouldn’t be a surprise. We have watched for years as he waged tennis battles as much with himself as his opponents, mastering the art of screaming tortured obscenities at himself at the exact moment the crowd was the loudest.
Now, that internal struggle within Murray, and all that cursing, has shifted to the question all athletes (except Tom Brady, apparently) must eventually confront. Is it time to go even if I’d rather not? We just saw Rick Nash, thought to be the best hockey player in the world back in 2005, finally concede the brain injury he suffered would no longer allow him to compete in the NHL. He was forced to retire last week at age 34.
Murray’s situation is different. Plagued by a right hip injury that won’t stop delivering jolts of pain, the Scot does have a few choices.
He wants to play on, just not with this degree of pain in his hip.
If the hip can’t be rehabilitated, he wants his swan song to be Wimbledon this year, the place he made history in 2013, ending 77 years of British inability to win the world’s most important tournament.
But there’s a glimmer of hope that significant surgery, called “resurfacing,” might allow him to continue playing beyond 2019, and he’s tempted to try it. The catch is that if he has that surgery, he won’t be able to play Wimbledon this year, and also may not play ever again. Which means this week’s loss in the Aussie Open will indeed have been his last.
No teary farewell at the All-England Club for him or the BBC. No more “C’mon Andy!” reverberating around Centre Court. It’s a nasty conundrum. “It’s a decision between doing (the surgery) or resting for the next four months and then training and building up to play Wimbledon one last time,” said Murray, saying he will decide by February.
For him to return to any level close to where he once was, we’re looking at a Tiger Woods-like, surgically-aided miracle.
Not sure we’re due for another one of those so soon.
Murray, 32 in May, was never the best in the game.
There was the Big Four, and he was fourth, after Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Fed had the sublime skills he was able to harness, Rafa the overwhelming sense of purpose. Djokovic was more complicated, but with careful work, his elastic body allowed him to do things others couldn’t and his mind became like steel.
Murray closed the gap between himself and the other three by sheer will, hammering his body into acceptable form like a blacksmith. The others changed their games to get better. Murray changed his physique.
He went from a scrawny athlete to a muscular powerhouse, and became one of the fastest and most dogged players in the game. His workouts became legendary.
When the results were favourable, his only response was to work even harder. He closed the 2016 season by beating Djokovic for his 24th consecutive victory, then went straight to Miami for training camp in the hottest, most demanding conditions he could find.
Murray, who says he currently can’t even walk properly, believes he may have worked too hard and inadvertently shortened his career. Nadal may have had to overcome chronic knee problems that were inflamed by competition, but Murray seems to believe he created his own pain and injuries.
“I would always go along with what I was being told,” he said. “That was a mistake.”
The most frustrating part for Murray is that he may be done at a time when tennis, as a sport, is proving to be more forgiving and hospitable to thirtysomethings than it was a generation ago.
The top three male players — Djokovic, Nadal and Federer — are all Murray’s age (Djokovic is one week younger) or older, and seven of the top 10 players are 30 or older. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have all faced major health challenges, but they’ve bounced back and none seem to be planning on retiring soon.
Murray, on the other hand, cradles only the slightest possibility that extensive and risky surgery will allow him to climb the mountain one more time. It’s hard to imagine him returning to a point where he could win seven best-of-five matches over a fortnight and capture another grand slam title.
Along with two Wimbledons and a U.S. Open, Murray has 45 career tournament wins, including the Rogers Cup three times. He also won gold at the 2016 Olympics and led Great Britain to the Davis Cup in 2015.
It’s been a heckuva run, all while carrying the mantle of being Britain’s No. 1 player after assuming that title from perennial bridesmaid Tim Henman. Oddly, Murray’s success hasn’t led to an upswing in British tennis participation, which has left him disappointed. It’s been different than in Canada where players like Milos Raonic, Daniel Nestor, Eugenie Bouchard and Denis Shapovalov have created a new buzz for the sport.
That hasn’t even happened near home for Murray. “There have been hardly any new indoor courts built in Scotland, which is strange,” he said.
That won’t impact his legacy, which is safe. If at times he was hard to love, perhaps it was partly because he seemed to loath himself at times. To meet him was to be surprised at his friendliness and humble nature, and standing up for women in his sport while others took snide potshots and complained about equal prize money showed him to be a true gentleman.
He’s among the greatest British sportsmen of his generation, and in the top 100 tennis players all time, better than Andy Roddick, not as accomplished as Ivan Lendl.
That won’t change whether he plays again or not. Which doesn’t make his choice any easier. He’s doesn’t want to play more for legacy. He just wants to play more.