The waiting is nearly over for Andy Murray who, after days of procrastination, says he is ready to play at Wimbledon – “unless in the next couple of days I wake up and don’t feel good”.
The former world No 1, currently lurking at 156 in the rankings after nearly a year away from the Tour, sounded more positive about his prospects at the place where he has won two of his three slam titles than he has since he began his comeback at Queen’s nearly a fortnight ago.
He has a tricky first round match on Tuesday against the unorthodox Frenchman Benoît Paire but has beaten him in each of their two meetings and, if his injured hip holds up to the stress of a best-of-five-set match, there is every chance he can work his way deeper into the draw. Indeed, Nick Kyrgios, who took two hours and 39 minutes to grind Murray down over three sets when he returned at Queen’s, thinks he will do better than that.
Murray is taking nothing for granted, though, and said on Saturday: “I have to view it very much day by day. I’m practising at a high level, a high intensity every day with some of the best players in the world. That’s really positive for me as part of getting better, to compete again.”
On a warm, still afternoon, he hit with Diego Schwartzman, the world No 11 and 14th seed, whom he could meet in the quarter-finals, and Murray said later he has things to work on. “I’d like to be playing better,” he said. “I’ve not been practising that long. You notice things that are maybe not quite where you would like them to be or where you remember them being a year ago. But I was trying my best today, although not maybe playing as well as I would have liked.”
He added: “In other sports when you come back, you don’t tend to be competing against the best in the world immediately, like, for five sets or three sets, whatever. You would build up a little bit, play 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and so on.
“I’m just trying to keep building, practising with these guys, then hopefully pulling up [well] each day and competing in the matches, which went well, I think, the last couple of weeks, at Queen’s and Eastbourne. So far here, that’s also been the case, which is good.”
He still needs to guard against the slightest physical regression, though. “In the past, that’s something that I would have taken for granted. Now, with where my recovery is at, I’m very aware of how I’m feeling each day, very aware of how my hip is. I’m spending lots of time working with my physios, trying to get stronger.
“I need to be very mindful of how I’m feeling on a day-to-day basis. Right now, I can’t say with 100% certainty – when I only started competing 10 days ago – how I’m going to feel after every match and each day. Maybe in the past, when things are a bit sore, you just get on with it. Now I need to be smart with that.”
If there is a single compelling reason for Murray to stand by his conviction to play, it is that, at 31 and nursing an aching body back to full working order, he knows there will not be that many visits to Wimbledon left in his distinguished career. A shot at a golden hat-trick at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 remains a target, according to his most optimistic assessment.
He said, also, he would love to be competing at a high level so his young daughters get to see what he does for a living. “I would want them to watch me playing where I’m physically capable of playing properly, at a level that I’d be happy playing at. I’m not just going to keep playing for four years or three years if I don’t feel like I can play, if I’m in pain, if I’m not enjoying it.
“I’m saying that based on the hope that I’m physically good and healthy, all of those things. If I had to stop tomorrow, yeah, I’d be pretty gutted, because I still love playing, I love the sport. I enjoy watching it. I enjoy the travelling. There’s nothing about it that I’d be looking forward to giving up, really.
“I want to keep playing as long as I can, providing I’m physically capable and I’m not in a lot of pain and discomfort.”
