Murray decides on rest cure rather than hip surgery
Briton does not expect to play again this year Hopes to be fit for the Brisbane International
Andy Murray announced yesterday that he is almost certainly finished with tennis for this year, because of his ongoing hip injury. He does not expect to return to the Tour until the Brisbane International, early in January.
The interesting point is that Murray has opted not to undergo an operation, despite the chronic nature of the problem. Bear in mind that it is now more than three months since he woke up, the morning after his gruelling French Open semi-final against Stan Wawrinka, feeling pain in the right hip.
Since then, his medical team have tried everything within their power to restore full mobility. It is understood that Murray used cortisone injections in an unsuccessful attempt to perform at his best at Wimbledon.
But despite a six-week rest after the end of that tournament, he was still forced to pull out of the US Open on Aug 26. At that moment, we could already be confident that Murray would not return to the court in 2017. For a player of his standing, grand slams are the only events that really matter – especially now he’s ticked off the world No1 ranking from his list of goals.
Yet the search for specialist advice continued. Having flown home from
New York before the
US Open started, Murray returned a week later for another consultation, adding to a list of perhaps half-adozen expert opinions that date back to his Wimbledon build-up.
The possibility of surgery will have been discussed, before being dismissed. Now, specialists in the field suggest that he may well continue with a programme of injections involving stem cells or PRP (platelet-rich plasma), which is derived through a process of spinning the patient’s own blood in a centrifuge. Rafael Nadal is known to have used PRP to treat his notoriously sensitive knees, which seem – in a reversal of the usual pattern – to be bothering him less as he gets older. It is possible Murray will be able to turn back the clock on his hip – which he admitted before Wimbledon had been bothering him since he was “very young” – in a similar way.
In his statement, Murray said: “I’m confident after this extended period of rest and rehabilitation that I will be able to reach my best level again and be competing for grand slam titles next season.” He should be able to take a shot at January’s Australian Open – where he has been runner-up five times – whereas an operation would probably have kept him off the tour until March. There are several ways of reading this decision, some more positive than others. Optimists will say he does not need surgery because the issue can be cured without it. Pessimists will reply that the hip could already be in such a bad way that surgery can offer no guarantees of success. The likely answer lies somewhere in the middle: that Murray is reluctant to go through another lengthy period of post-operative rehab, like the one he endured after back surgery in 2013, until he’s exhausted all options. The one thing we can say with confidence is that all three major winners from 2016 – the other two being Novak Djokovic and Wawrinka – will have finished their 2017 seasons after Wimbledon, having played through pain during the grasscourt season. Neither will Kei Nishikori appear again before January. When you consider that Roger Federer did the same thing last year, and that Rafael Nadal also skipped the last two big tournaments of 2016 to give himself a longer offseason, we do seem to be looking at a trend.
He does not want another lengthy period of post-op rehab like he endured after his back surgery in 2013