Murray returns to the court after recovering from bout of shingles
● World No 1 starts singles campaign in Dubai today but suffers defeat in first round of doubles
Andy Murray has recovered from a bout of shingles and has returned to action in this week’s Dubai Duty Free Championships.
Murray had been inactive since losing in the fourth round of the Australian Open five weeks ago and was laid low for a couple of weeks.
“I’m fine now, I’ve been training flat-out for the past few weeks,” Murray said. “I was a bit sick for ten days, a couple of weeks, after I got back from Australia.
“I feel fresh and ready to go here. 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 that hard in training when I got back into it.”
Murray said he was not sure if the illness had started while he was playing in Melbourne. Shingles is an infection of a nerve and the skin around it caused by the same virus which causes chickenpox.
Murray, who is the top seed in the singles, faces Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri in the first round today with the winner to play Guillermo Garcia-lopez of Spain in the last 16.
Ahead of his singles campaign,however, Murray partnered Serbia’s Nenad Zimonjic yesterday but lost 6-1, 7-6 (7/2) to Briton Dan Evans and Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller in an hour and 12 minutes in the first round of the men’s doubles.
The winning duo will progress to round two in which they face Finland’s Henri Kontinen and Australian John Peers, a former partner of Jamie Murray.
The singles event also includes seven-time winner Roger Federer, playing in his first tournament since his stunning Australian Open victory at the age of 35 in Melbourne. The Swiss, seeded No 3, opened his account yesterday by taking just 54 minutes to defeat Benoit Paire of France 6-1, 6-3.
Federer’s serve was unaffected by the lay-off as he won 70 per cent of his service points and broke his French opponent in both sets twice to set up a meeting with the winner of the all-russian match between Mikhail Youzhny and qualifier Evgeny Donskoy.
“I think I returned very well for a first round. I was able to get my second serves in deep, was able to go into the offensive quickly,” said Federer.
“I didn’t have to move that much. It was very quick rallies so we’ll see how that’s going to turn out. “But obviously it couldn’t be a better first round for me here in Dubai and I’m glad to be back.”
Fourth seed Gael Monfils took 80 minutes to see off Egyptian wildcard Mohamed Safwat, eventually winning 6-4 , 6-3.
Earlier in the day Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber, who is now two away from a 400th win of his career, dispatched eighth seed Gilles Muller 6-4, 7-6 (7/1).
“Hopefully I can achieve the mark here in this tournament. It would be great (and) mean I’m in the semi-finals,” he said.
Spaniards Roberto Bautista Agut, Marcel Granollers and Guillermo Garcia-lopez are all into the second round after victories over Russian Karen Khachanov, the Czech Republic’s Jiri Vesely and Serbia’s Viktor Troicki respectively.