Battle against injury with plans to retire
(the hip resurfacing) is a better option for me,” said Murray, who said he will need a hip replacement eventually.
“It [surgery] was not something I was thinking about until a week ago.
“I was planning on playing through until Wimbledon and that was what I wanted to do.
“I said I think I can manage this because I have been playing through pain for a long time and there’s no reason I can’t do it for another five months, knowing there’s an end-point. I can be smart with scheduling.
“But when I got here I thought I am tired of it and don’t really want to have another five months of that pain really and that’s when I starting discussing having something like that done.”
Murray said he had thought about retiring many times over the past year but it was only in the last month that he could no longer see a way out.
“It was in December when I kind of made that decision and told my team about it,” he said.
“It was in the middle of one practice. I had tears in my eyes and said, ‘My hip is killing me. I shouldn’t be continuing to go through that for nothing anymore.”
The Scot, who is due to take on Roberto Bautista-Agut, the 22nd seed from Spain, in the first round here, said his hip does not allow him to recover between matches or after training.
“In Brisbane [last week], I felt OK in the first match, not amazing, just OK,” he said.
“But next day, I felt quite a bit worse. Obviously, as a tournament goes on, the pain gets worse, so my performance drops. There’s no possibility for me to do well.”
Murray was well-beaten in practice by world No 1 Novak Djokovic on Thursday and he admitted he was simply not enjoying his tennis anymore.
“It has nothing to do with the result of the practice; it’s the feeling that I had during the practice, of how I’m able to play like I am, in the state that I’m in,” he said.
“You just kind of feel like helpless on the court and it’s just … it sucks.”