On the face of it, Andy Murray’s withdrawal from an exhibition at the Hurlingham Club in London on Tuesday, citing a sore hip, is no cause for great alarm and of a piece with his season, indeed his career.
He will, he says, play on Friday. However, taken cumulatively, the defending champion and world No1 will be at least mildly disturbed his body is aching in more places than he might have anticipated. Since his heroic charge over the closing stages of last season to rip away Novak Djokovic’s top ranking Murray has suffered physically, and perhaps spiritually.
He had shingles in Australia, where he lost in the first week to the 50th-ranked Mischa Zverev; a sore elbow forced him to miss the Miami Open; he was struck down by a heavy cold on the eve of the French Open, yet still managed to reach the semi-finals; and now, after a shock first-round defeat at the Queen’s Club last week, he will wait until Friday – the day of the Wimbledon draw – to have only his second competitive hit on grass of the summer.
Grigor Dimitrov, who practised with Murray on Tuesday morning at Wimbledon, said later: “I’m very surprised to hear that. Wasn’t aware of that. We hit for more than an hour. I hope he’s good for Wimbledon.”
If the hip strain is no more than an inconvenience, as his team suggests, he should be in decent shape to defend his title. He did, after all, win an Olympic gold medal and his first two majors with a chronic back problem that later required surgery.
Yet there is a feeling that all the leading players are feeling the pressure, physical and otherwise, as age catches up with them. Rafael Nadal, who has had one of his best clay-court seasons in many years, withdrew at the last minute from the Queen’s Club tournament to guard against the specific strain that grass puts on his knees, which have been the source of his injury woes for more than a decade.
Even Roger Federer, who returned from six months out after knee surgery to win his 18th slam in Melbourne, took the precaution of missing the clay swing so he could be in good shape for Wimbledon, where he has won seven titles and might yet win another. He showed by beating the Tour’s latest young lion, Alexander Zverev, brother of Mischa, in the Halle final on Sunday that he is back to his imperious best. However, can he carry his three-set dominance into the five-set hell of the fortnight of Wimbledon? He admits he was exhausted after winning in Miami, a key factor in his decision to give the clay season a miss, altogether understandable at 35.
Djokovic, meanwhile, has an entirely different dilemma. While the others are relatively settled in their support teams, he has no full-time coach and is coming off a difficult-to-fathom clay season, brilliant one match, diabolical the next, never more so than surrendering in three sets to Dominic Thiem at Roland Garros.
The Serb expects Andre Agassi to be back with him this weekendbefore Wimbledon, and he began his tentative preparation with a debut on the grass of Eastbourne on Tuesday, but his match against Vasek Pospisil was suspended after one game.
So, given Stan Wawrinka’s first-round exit from Queen’s Club and dismal record in SW19, none of the players who have shared all but two of the past 49 slams are entirely confident their minds and bodies will survive two weeks of Wimbledon. It is not a negative; the best sport always carries an element of uncertainty.
While one or all of them will still be punching in the final stages of the campaign, their younger rivals know they are all vulnerable.
