Andy out to inspire with his remarkable comeback tale
ANDY MURRAY hopes his story of swapping the surgeon’s table for the Grand Slam stage with a metal hip inspires others.
Next week’s US Open will be the Scot’s first Grand Slam singles tournament since his second operation in January of last year.
Murray beat world No.7 Alexander Zverev – his best victory in ranking terms since 2016 – at this week’s Western and Southern Open.
A last-16 loss to Canadian Milos Raonic followed but the 33-year-old believes he’s proved doubting surgeons wrong with his comeback.
Injury, combined with the Covid-19 shutdown, means the back-to-back events in New York are his first toplevel tournaments since the Davis Cup nine months ago.
He said: “It’s a challenge playing with a metal hip. It’s not that easy. I’ve learned lots, learned lots about myself. It’s been a good journey.
“Hopefully I have inspired some people who have got these issues and might have the operation, to try to show you can keep going.
“There are a lot of people who told me I should stop, which probably made me want to do it even more.
“A few surgeons told me it was done, which annoyed me a lot. After the latest
BY NEIL McLEMAN setback in November I was pretty gutted, to be honest. It was like, ‘I’m back, I can play, I can compete, I can win tournaments’ – and then I got a setback. I didn’t really know whether that was going to get better or not, so it was hard.
“But because I can still play with the best players in the world and do myself justice, I think if I can stay healthy I’ll have some more good moments on the tennis court.”
His brother Jamie is into the semi-finals of the doubles with Neal Skupski after beating Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies of Germany 4-6 6-1 10-8.
Serena Williams exited in the third round, losing 5-7 7-6 (5) 6-1 to Maria Sakkari.
The American said: “I put myself in this situation.
“It’s like dating a guy that you know sucks. That’s what I keep doing out here.
“It’s like, ‘I have got to get rid of this guy’. It just makes no sense. It’s frustrating.”
ANDY MURRAY ON HIS GRAND SLAM RETURN