Murray shakes off shingles to step back on the treadmill in Dubai tournament
Concerns that Andy Murray might be pushing himself too hard in training have been heightened by the news that he contracted shingles on his return home from the Australian Open.
Murray is in Dubai this week for his third tournament of the year and says he is ready to play after practising hard for the last fortnight.
He was rendered inactive for two weeks before that, however, by the illness, which usually affects children, the elderly or those with a depressed immune system – a sideeffect of overtraining.
Those close to Murray suggest that his December training block in Florida delivered an unprecedented volume of fitness work under the close attention of head coach Ivan Lendl – a man who never saw a running track without wanting to sprint around it.
Yet this came hard on the heels of an unprecedented five straight tournament victories at the end of last season. The consensus is that Murray arrived in Melbourne – where he lost to unseeded Mischa Zverev in the fourth round – without the usual spring in his legs.
When asked this month about Roger Federer’s shock victory in Australia, which came on the back of a six-month lay-off, he replied: “In tennis we play such a lot during the year and sometimes coming to an event fresh can be a huge advantage. Maybe that is something we can all learn from.”
Yesterday Murray clarified his recent struggles to reporters in Dubai. “I was a bit sick for 10 days, a couple of weeks, after I got back from Australia,” he said. “I had shingles. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great.
“I had to go easy for a little while, so I wasn’t able to push myself that hard in training when I got back into it. But I’m fine now and have been training flat out the last two weeks.”
He will open his campaign in Dubai tomorrow against Malek Jaziri of Tunisia.