‘My brain was telling my leg to move but it wouldn’t. My muscles were just switched off ’
Andy Murray reveals pain endured to win first title since surgery, writes Simon Briggs in Antwerp
To put Andy Murray’s title-winning run in Antwerp into perspective, it is worth remembering where he was in February: sitting in a chair with his body bolt upright, because he could not put the slightest flexion into the joint of his right hip.
The previous week, Murray had undergone the second major operation of his career. To the uninitiated, a “hip resurfacing” might sound like a convenient keyhole job in which a few bumps are smoothed out. But the truth is more drastic: this is a partial replacement in which a metal cap is placed on the top of the femur, slotting into a metal socket in the pelvis.
To remove the damaged cartilage in Murray’s arthritic joint, his mighty leg muscles had to be slashed open. Only then could the hardware – which, happily, has no nerve endings and thus no feeling – be implanted. So to have rebuilt himself physically over the past nine months is testament to his patience, determination, and extraordinary tolerance for pain.
“I would sit in a chair and try to touch the ground,” Murray said. “Every day you chip away and you go a millimetre further. It seems like nothing and these are the little things that you find frustrating.
“Or I would do this.” He hopped nimbly out of his seat, lay on his side with his knees slightly bent, and lifted the top knee upwards in an exercise known as the clamshell. “The first day, my brain was telling it to move, but it wouldn’t. These muscles were just totally switched off. And I found that to be the most tiring thing mentally. That stuff, doing it every day, you feel a bit sorry for yourself and you’re like, ‘my leg doesn’t even want to move’. It’s tedious.
“But then after like week two, three, four it starts to come back. I spoke to the ice hockey player Ed Jovanovski, who had the operation and got back to playing in the NHL after eight months. He told me that the rehab was hard but that his hip was brilliant at the end of it and the reason why he didn’t continue playing for longer is that he was 39. So I knew that if I did it properly I might have a chance. I just didn’t know if it was going to work out for me or not.”
The answer can no longer be in doubt. In Antwerp, Murray won five matches in six days, finishing up with a 2hr
27 min showdown against old foe Stan Wawrinka. In that final
– and also in Saturday’s semi-final against stylish Frenchman Ugo Humbert
– he was outgunned, but still managed to run a successful guerrilla campaign based around defence and the occasional counterpunch. Crucially, his body was up to the task. In explosivity, he is perhaps a few per cent off the old maximum that led one former fitness trainer to compare him to Usain Bolt. Even so, he remains quicker than most. Factor in his self-belief and mental stamina, and Murray is intimidating opponents again. Not so much with his firepower, which has room for improvement, but with his granite-jawed refusal to back down. Once he had
finished demonstrating his rehab exercises, Murray and the three members of his team – coach Jamie Delgado, fitness trainer Matt Little and physio Shane Annun – went into the centre of Antwerp for dinner. “We’d agreed that we would do that [eat out] even if I lost,” Murray explained, “although I wouldn’t have been good company.”
He is increasingly determined to celebrate success. During these troublesome past 2½ years, much of which he spent on the sofa, he came to realise that he used to take some parts of this unusual lifestyle for granted. Another aspect of Murray’s game which he has been hoping to address is the sarcastic backchat that he tends to throw at his team when stressed.
Unfortunately, the evidence of last week – when he routinely turned to his corner with a grouchy remark – suggests that it is now hard-wired into his nervous system. Even so, he hopes that Delgado and company will continue to put up with his rants. “It’s something I wish I didn’t do,” he said when asked about all the chuntering. “I would find that annoying if I was coaching. But it’s something that I have struggled to change over the years. I do try and do everything that they tell me. I am always questioning, especially as I get older, like ‘Why am I doing that?’ But I do it and I work hard every day.
“Would you rather have someone being a pest on the court but fighting for every point and working as hard as they can? Or someone who is not trying hard and not doing what they’re saying?” The question answers itself.