Comeback trail Murray steps up recovery in Nice
A collection of video clips emerged yesterday of Andy Murray on a practice court: something unseen since he underwent hip surgery on Jan 8.
Murray travelled to Nice over the weekend, where he will be spending the coming week at the new Mouratoglou Tennis Academy. It is understood he had previously hit a few balls at Raynes Park, a facility in southwest London that belongs to the All England Club. But after a couple of months in the gym, this trip to France still represents the moment when his on-court training begins in earnest.
The clips show Murray in Nice working on an outdoor hard court with three longstanding members of his team, coach Jamie Delgado, fitness trainer Matt Little and physio Shane Annun.
Murray was clearly labouring, but then this is the start of a lengthy process, and we can hardly expect him to look razor-sharp.
Murray is working towards a possible hard-court return followed by a serious tilt at the grass in the UK this summer.
In other news, many have been surprised by the Miami Open’s offhand, even dismissive response to Caroline Wozniacki’s unfortunate experience here on Friday night.
In a statement posted on her Twitter page, the popular Wozniacki complained that her family had been the subject of violent threats and foul language at courtside during her defeat to Monica Puig.
But the new tournament director James Blake came up with a mealymouthed reply, saying: “If we had been notified, the situation would have been dealt with immediately.”
Wozniacki’s brother Patrick has now offered further insight into the incident. Speaking to the Danish media, he explained that “David [Lee, Wozniacki’s fiancé] tried to grab some of the security people and tell them that they should take control of the people who sat around them. They just laughed.”
Finally, Roger Federer – who will drop to world No2 today after losing his opening match to qualifier Thanasi Kokkinakis – offered a little more context to French-speaking reporters about his decision to skip the clay-court season.
“I had a lot of discussions about it, to see where I am,” said Federer, who has just suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time since the spring of 2014. “I want to play as long as possible and playing on clay was not a good solution. My team prefer to do two changes of surface in a season rather than three.”