The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Intimate documentary charts Murray’s return from rehab hell
Stephen Eighteen reviews Amazon Prime’s wartsand-all portrait of injured tennis star’s comeback battle
“Do you think Picasso would have people filming him doing his best work?” asks Andy Murray during the year of rehabilitation hell that was his 2018.
It is July, and the Scot is moments away from a second operation on his right hip in six months, after a procedure in Australia in January failed to relieve chronic pain in the battered joint.
Murray is shocked that a warts-andall documentary charting his battle with injury commands evidence of his artistry in a hospital waiting room, pen and pad in hand while wearing an oversized blue gown, rather than on an SW19 tennis court, racket and ball in hand while wearing tailored whites.
“I haven’t finished yet and I am being asked to show what I have done,” the Dunblane-born Murray protests. “And also, I am not in a creative state now. This is not where I show my art. This is some sketching ready for my next piece.”
Those of us who have followed Murray’s tennis career from his days as a precocious teenager know better than to believe this.
We can recall 2006, when some in England were desperate to believe the unfounded (and later rubbished) rumours that he wore a Paraguay shirt prior to a World Cup football game, perhaps to justify the hilarious shouts of “Come on, Tim!” during Murray’s Wimbledon matches. The message here was that the English would never take this young upstart to their hearts as they had their darling Henman.
That they did – and then some
– was not just because of Murray’s prowess on the tennis court, though two Wimbledons, a US Open, two Olympic golds, a Davis Cup, an ATP Tour finals and 40 other tournament titles certainly helped.
It was because Murray has given a big part of himself to the public, even though it may go against his low-key instincts. He has opened up and let it all out. He has cried, cheered and shown a full range of emotions, as well as a criminally-overlooked wit (his Instagram Q&AS are vintage), and spoken out about drug-testing and female equality in his sport.
What you see is what you get so, yes, we knew that Murray’s protestations in the hospital waiting room were mock and that he was going to reveal his drawing. He turned it over to show a sketch of the All England Tennis Club.
If Murray was right about Picasso, then Passion Pictures must have been thinking of Carl Jung when it made Andy Murray: Resurfacing, this 108-minute Amazon Prime documentary. The Swiss psychiatrist said there is no coming to consciousness without pain, and the agony of Murray’s hip is the elephant that is warmly welcomed into the room for all but the final 15 minutes.
The video diary charts in grim detail Murray’s travails from January 2018, beginning with that first operation and continuing through a year of rehab that included an aborted comeback.
We see plenty of Murray at his home in Oxshott, Surrey. At one point, he is swimming and stretching while his wife Kim is out playing in the snow during the Beast from the East in February.
There is plenty of behind-the-scenes insight as we get to know Matt Little, Murray’s personal trainer, his coach Jamie Delgado, and physio Mark Bender – “Also known as slender, which is ironic because he’s not... slender.” That Murray humour again.
In March, he is practising at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in France and the discomfort is clear. But Murray will not give in and, by June, after a cortisone injection, he is back playing professional tennis at London’s Queen’s Club and in Eastbourne.
There are plenty of moments of introspection.
“If I do stop playing, I don’t know what I will do because I have always had structure to my day,” says Murray in July, ahead of the operation to “grizzle” a nerve to dull the pain.
Knowing that the toil and these procedures are ultimately forlorn makes it a hard watch, and there is little satisfaction in Murray saying he feels a lot better after this operation when the fixes are only short-term and risk long-term damage.
The most poignant moment comes in August when Murray erupts in floods of tears courtside after beating Marius Copil at the Citi Open in Washington. At 5.09am, two hours later, he says: “I was really emotional because I feel like this is the end for me. I want to keep going but my body is telling me ‘no’. It hurts and I am sorry I can’t keep going.”
This is Murray at his most raw but, despite his apparent submission, he needs time before he can call it a day. By the end of December, he has decided that the Australian Open in early 2019 could be his final tournament, or perhaps Wimbledon the following summer if he can stay fit enough.
In Melbourne, there is plenty of tension ahead of the press conference in which Murray goes public on his career thoughts, and after he gallantly goes down to Roberto Bautista-agut in five sets in the first round, it seems the film-makers are – like the tournament organisers who prematurely played a farewell video – willing for this to be the final chapter.
Murray has other ideas.
By the end of January 2019, Dr Sarah Muirhead-allwood is resurfacing his hip at London’s Princess Grace Hospital in an operation that is intended primarily to improve his quality of life rather than inspire a return to the tennis court.
Remarkably, Murray achieved the latter swiftly and successfully, culminating in a win over multiple grand-slam winner Stan Wawrinka in the European Open final in Antwerp in October.
It is a shame that only the final 15 minutes are devoted to the pain-free and successful comeback of 2019, and that the timeline ends that July, before he has proved his new hip can cope with the rigours of singles competition.
It would have been nice to have seen more of the content, at-peace Murray that briefly emerges after the hip resurfacing that saved not only his career but, one imagines, his sanity too.
As a blood, sweat and tears account of a sportsman’s career hanging in the balance, it is a great watch, but this documentary finds Murray’s unexpectedly successful recovery a bridge too far.