Andy Murray is hopeful of return to singles tennis before the end of the 2019 season but today admitted that September’s US Open is too soon as he plots his comeback from hip surgery in January.
Murray will begun a comeback of sorts at next week’s Fever-Tree Championships in London in the doubles alongside playing partner Feliciano Lopez.
The former world No1 has already ruled out playing singles at Wimbledon next month but could yet enter the doubles there depending on how his hip holds up at Queen’s in the coming days.
But having previously warned he may never return to competitive singles tennis, the Briton today sounded a more confident note.
“It’s baby steps just now,” said Murray, who last week practised at Wimbledon with Australian Open semi-finalist Frances Tiafoe.
“I’m feeling good, pretty much pain free and enjoying kind of just training, practising, improving all the time just now.
"I don’t think when Wimbledon finishes that I will just step onto the singles court the following week and everything’s good.
“I still have quite a lot of work to do before I’m at a level where I feel like I’ll be able to be competitive.
"At the moment, I’ve been progressing all of the time, at some stage it’s probably going to plateau for a while before I’m able to kick on.
“I hope at some stage this year I would be able to get back to playing singles again.
"When that is, I’m not really that interested in putting a time limit on it because I’m quite happy just now so I don’t need to play singles after Wimbledon or the US Open to enjoy what I’m doing just now.
"If I can that would be brilliant but I don’t think that’s going to be case. I think it’s going to take a bit longer.”
