Andy in new hip op fears
ANDY MURRAY fears he needs more hip surgery which could rule him out of Wimbledon and finally end his career.
The former world No.1 made a successful return from a hip resurfacing op
last year but picked up a new injury related to the surgery and hasn’t played competitively since a November Davis Cup win over Tallon Griekspoor.
The ongoing issue which is currently keeping him sidelined is heterotopic ossification – where extra bone grows in the soft tissue after surgery – and unless it settles down he’ll need to go under the knife in May which could rule him out of a fairytale return to SW19.
Murray is still hopeful the issue can be treated with keyhole surgery but won’t know for sure until he spends a few weeks on the practice courts.
He is aiming to return to action at the Miami Open on March 25 and then play the clay-court season.
Murray said: “I do want to keep playing. It’s just whether I’m able to.
“It has been unbelievably complex. Hopefully the activity around this heterotopic ossification settles down. I’ll see what happens in the next few weeks. This is extremely common in hip resurfacing, a traumatic kind of injury.
“The issue is if you try to remove that too early, while it is still active in the process of growing, it just grows straight back. So what I need to do just now is build up in these next couple of weeks to really test it. I will really test the hip out.
“Right now I’m fine. But there’s a difference between what I’m doing today and playing high-level tennis. I should know by the end of next month whether I’m good to play or not with it.
“If I need to have that removed, it’s a pain in the a***. Over the last couple of years I have become quite pessimistic about time frames because of what has gone on.
“I don’t want to say I will definitely be in Miami but there is also the possibility that I might need to have something done. We’ll just have to see.
“The thing is, if I have it removed and it grows back, I can’t do anything about that.”