ANDY’S AGONY
Injury and sickness catch up with No 1
ANDY MURRAY was expected to be well enough to fly home to the UK last night, but events late last year appear to have exacted a heavy price.
In the past seven weeks, Murray has suffered shingles, an elbow injury and now a flu-type virus that has capped a miserable trip to the united States.
Last night, British davis Cup captain Leon Smith confirmed that the world no 1 had been unwell and expressed doubts about whether he would be able to line up against France in the quarter-final in rouen early next month.
Murray is believed to have started feeling below par during practice last Friday. He missed an ATP Player Council meeting and a major sponsor appearance here because of it, as well as missing the Miami Open.
The travails of the past two months — winning the dubai Championships is the one happy punctuation — will ill focus attention on the 29-yearold Scot’s coaching set-up and in particular the part-time role of Ivan Lendl.
Lendl has been a boon to Murray, but the player’s disappointments at the recent US Open and australian Open don’t seem to have been helped by an excess of play and practice that left him with too little in the tank.
Murray had an exhausting end to last season, winning five tournaments in a row and becoming world no 1.
Being ranked first, a huge deal in the culture of tennis, brings a pressure all of its own. On top of that, he needed to assimilate things such as a slew of awards and a knighthood — which he was happy to accept, while being slightly embarrassed about it. He took barely two weeks off at the end of the season and then, according to sources, was put through a brutal training block in Miami which Lendl insisted on.
It did not have the desired effect and while this season has hardly been a disaster, it has not gone to plan. This has not affected Murray’s standing at the top of the 12-month rankings, but he has a lot of points to defend when the clay season begins.
Missing out on Miami means he will, potentially, barely have seen Lendl between australia and the French Open.
Murray’s immediate response is to see his specialist when he gets home for more scans on the elbow injury. The expectation at this point is that rest should provide a cure in time for the clay courts.
It is also understood that Murray is reconsidering his schedule for next year in light of what has happened so far in 2017. He has already said he will look at whether the Qatar Open is the right build-up to australia — it clearly isn’t — and there is also the suggestion that he will not return to Indian Wells.
The Californian desert has not been a happy hunting ground by his standards. under ATP participation rules, Murray has now put in enough years of ‘service’ to be allowed some leeway in playing otherwise compulsory Masterslevel events.
Meanwhile, Smith expects to hear more from Murray within the next five days.
‘I haven’t spoken to him directly, he wasn’t well here as well as having the injury,’ said Smith, who may have to rely on Kyle Edmund and dan Evans for the singles matches against France.
But Smith hopes Murray will travel with the squad if the diagnosis on his elbow is promising.
‘It’s only a stone’s throw away and it’s on clay, so with the clay season coming up it’s an opportunity to play on it,’ said Smith.