Murray may not recover in time for Wimbledon

MAJOR doubts have emerged over Andy Murray’s recovery from hip surgery and his fitness for the grass-court season which could also force him to miss Wimbledon.

The former world number one has not played a competitive match since SW19 last summer and has twice aborted comeback attempts, firstly at the US Open and then the Australian Open in January.

After the second of those he went under the knife in Melbourne and was initially very positive about his prospects.

Following a successful period in the gym, he expressed hope he would be able to return before the grass-court season and the Lawn Tennis Association created two new second-tier tournaments in Glasgow and Loughborough, partly with Murray’s comeback in mind.

But the Glasgow event came and went last week without him and Murray is not on the entry list for the tournament in Loughborough, beginning on May 21.

The Scot, who turns 31 next week, has been notably quiet on social media since a flurry of activity when he returned to oncourt training in France at the end of March.

He has reportedly not been seen at his training base at Wimbledon for a number of weeks, and his coach Jamie Delgado posted a picture on Twitter on Tuesday after hitting, not with Murray but Tim Henman.

Murray was on the entry list for the Fever-Tree Championships at Queen’s Club, which was released on Tuesday, while he has also entered the Libema Open in Holland, starting on June 11.

But the signs now are he could well miss both, as well as potentially Wimbledon, meaning he would not have played competitive tennis for more than a year.

Murray has continued to enter tournaments, most recently the Citi Open in Washington, which starts on July 28.

In an accompanying interview with the Washington Post, the three-time grand slam champion compared his recovery to the back surgery he had in 2013, saying: “This time’s been harder. There’s been a lot more ups and downs.”