If I play like that, I won’t win Wimbledon, admits Murray
● Shock defeat at Queen’s leaves world No 1’s preparations for SW19 in tatters
Andy Murray will not win Wimbledon, not if he plays the way he did yesterday to lose his Aegon Championships crown at Queen’s Club. That was the considered opinion of the world No 1 after his shock defeat in the first round.
Murray was well beaten 7-6, 6-2 by Jordan Thompson, the world No 90 from Australia. It means that the Scot will now go to Wimbledon to begin the defence of his title there having played only one competitive grass court match.
He has lost his opening match before at Queen’s – in 2006 and 2012 – and five years ago he did go on to reach the Wimbledon final. But the two times Murray has triumphed in SW19, he has gone there riding a wave of confidence having lifted the huge Queen’s Club trophy in the build-up.
“It’s a big blow, for sure. This tournament has given me great preparation in the past, and when I have done well here, Wimbledon has tended to go pretty well, too,” Murray said.
“I do think that a lot can change in a short period of time. Everything was a lot better in practice. Today’s match was not good, but I was much better in practice. And, yeah, hopefully I get enough time on the court these next couple of weeks and work on some things, because I’m going to need to. If I play like that, I certainly won’t win Wimbledon. But I can play better than that.”
Murray’s year has stuttered and spluttered since the start of January and every promising improvement seems to have been met with a swift disappointment. Reaching the semi-finals of the French Open less than two weeks ago gave cause for optimism. That was dashed with yesterday’s defeat.
“I said before this tournament there was still a lot of work to be done,” he said. “After the French Open, I knew that I was still quite far from where I needed to be. So that’s why I got back on the practice court quite soon afterwards, but I was certainly feeling better in the build-up here than I was going into the French. I certainly would have expected to have played and done a bit better.”
Murray will sit down with his team and try to formulate a plan of action. There are plenty of exhibition events scattered around London and the Home Counties and they will be falling over themselves to try to attract his attention. But exhibition matches bear no resemblance to match play – and Murray needs to sharpen every weapon in his armoury to be ready for Wimbledon.
“I haven’t been in this position loads,” he said. “Over the years it’s happened a couple of times, but I will speak to the team, see what I do. It’s not ideal obviously, but guys have in the past also gone in to Wimbledon having not won lots of matches. Novak [Djokovic] a number of times hasn’t played any warm-up tournaments and played very well there.
“There are no guarantees that I won’t do well at Wimbledon, but it certainly would have helped to have had more matches. That’s always been the case for me. At this event when I’ve got matches, it’s certainly helped at Wimbledon.”
According to Aljaz Bedene, there is no good time to play Andy Murray. According to Aljaz Bedene, Andy Murray is the favourite for Wimbledon. According to Aljaz Bedene, Andy Murray is most at home and plays his best on the grass courts of London.
But then Aljaz Bedene pulled out of his first-round match against the world No 1 at the Aegon Championships yesterday – he had a sore wrist – and in his place stood Jordan Thompson, the world No 90 from Australia. And Thompson wiped the floor with Murray 7-6, 6-2.
Clearly, the Murray that Bedene has waxed so lyrical about just 24 hours before was a different bloke to the one who walloped his forehand far and wide, who took more than an hour to manufacture a break point and who melted away in the early evening sunshine.
Sure enough, Thompson had more grass-court matches under his belt than the Scot – this was Murray’s first outing of the season on the green stuff. Thompson, meanwhile, had reached the final of the Challenger event in Surbiton two weeks ago, lost in the first round in ‘s-hertogenbosch last week and then headed to Queen’s Club for the qualifying competition. He lost there, too, in the second round but squeaked into the main draw as a lucky loser thanks to Bedene’s injury.
But none of that should have mattered against the defending champion, the man with five Queen’s Club trophies and two Wimbledon cups to his name. Thompson should not have been derailing the world No 1’s Wimbledon preparations with such ease and such aplomb.
From the opening game, Thompson did very little wrong and Murray did very little well. The defending champion looked a little ring rusty on the grass – which was to be expected – but the 23-year-old Australian was having a field day. He clattered his serve (he has a “live arm” according to Murray, a fast service action that can be hard to read), he nipped about on the slick surface and made sure that Murray could find no obvious weaknesses to exploit. The first hint of an opening for Murray came at the start of the second set. At last he had three break points to play with. But he fluffed them all thanks to two duff returns and another forehand heading for Barons Court tube station and from there he was not allowed to get close to the Australian’s serve again.
By that stage, too, Murray had let the first set tiebreak slip away and was facing an uphill struggle. To let those break points go as well just confirmed the fears of the faithful sitting in the crowd. Ivan Lendl, pictured, looked even grimmer than usual. It was the first time in 136 consecutive matches, a run that stretches back to the US Open in 2015, that Murray had failed to break an opponent’s serve. The last man to shut Murray out was Roger Federer in the Cincinnati tournament that summer just before Murray headed to New York. And Thompson ain’t no Federer.
“He played better than me,” Murray said. “That’s what happened. The first set there was not much in it. I made some mistakes in the middle part of the tiebreak, which gifted it to him a little bit. That wasn’t a great sort of period of the match for me there.
“And then the second set I had a 0-40 game. Didn’t get it. Got broken soon after that. I feel like I have made a lot of mistakes in the second set and gifted him a few points which I wouldn’t normally do. But I didn’t create loads of chances, really. I didn’t return particularly well. He served big. He served well.”
Murray sounded disappointed, as was to be expected, but he also sounded a little stunned. It was as if he could not quite believe that he had played so poorly after practising so hard and so well. He was a very pale imitation of the man who marched through the grass-court season unbeaten last year and he was not altogether sure why.
He thought he had made progress at the French Open by reaching the semi-finals but then, after a good solid week of week on the grass, he played poorly against a bloke who, by rights, should not even have been playing at Queen’s in the first place. It is the story of Murray’s stop-start year.
“Obviously, right now I’m not playing as well as I was 12 months ago,” he said. “Most of that comes down to confidence in matches, really. When you’re playing a lot of matches and winning consistently, it helps you make better decisions at important moments. Today the couple of
“I feel like I have made a lot of mistakes in the second set and gifted him a few points which I wouldn’t normally do”
ANDY MURRAY
times where I made two poor mistakes in the middle part of that tiebreak when I was ahead, and then beginning of the second set, that’s just poor decisions and not hitting the ball well in the big moments.”
He and his team now have 12 days to put things right before Murray begins the defence of his Wimbledon title at 1pm sharp on 3 July. A lot can change between now and then but the only certainty is that the man Bedene seemed so scared of playing bore no relation to the dethroned champion who left Queen’s Club last night.