Andy Murray believes he deserves a chance to compete at Wimbledon for a final time but he will wait until the very last moment to decide on his participation after returning to training and taking positive steps forward during rehab in the aftermath of his back surgery on Saturday.
“The rate that I’m improving just now, if that was to continue then an extra 72 to 96 hours makes a huge difference,” said Murray on Thursday. “It’s complicated, and it’s made more complicated because I want to play at Wimbledon one more time. I want to have that opportunity to play the tournament and I know that some people might look at that and say, withdrawing from a tournament late at the last minute or something like that isn’t the right thing to do, even though it happens every single week on the tour.
“The winner of Queen’s will pull out of Eastbourne when the draw has been done and is clearly totally fit. But I feel like I deserve the opportunity to try to play there again. And I want to have that opportunity, so I’m going to give it as long as I can to see how well I recover.”
Murray, who has won two Wimbledon titles and two Olympic gold medals, had planned to finish his career at either the All England Club or the Paris Games this summer, but his final grass-court season took a disastrous turn last Wednesday at the Queen’s Club when the five-time champion was forced to retire from his second-round match with a painful back injury.
According to Murray, scans after the French Open had already identified the spinal cyst but it had grown significantly by Queen’s. After numerous medical consultations following his retirement there, Murray had back surgery on Saturday and he was initially told that he would be out for six to 12 weeks and there would be no chance of him competing at Wimbledon again.
He has spent the subsequent days looking for new opinions. Murray says the rehab has gone extremely well and he began hitting again on Wednesday, but every day makes a difference to his prospects of being able to compete again.
Before the injury, Murray had planned to play doubles, too, alongside his brother, Jamie, for the first time at Wimbledon. Although he is more likely to compete in doubles than in singles across best of five sets, Murray will be in the singles draw when it is made at 10am on Friday and he does not feel guilty. He believes he deserves the chance.
“It has been mentioned to me: ‘Are you going to withdraw before the draw at 10am on Friday?’ And I’m, like: ‘Well, no, I’m not.’ I’m going to wait until the last minute to see if I’m going to be able to [play] and I’ve earned that right to do that. This is not clearcut where I am 100% going to be ready to play or there is a 0% chance that I can play. That is the situation. I would say it’s probably more likely that I’m not able to play singles right now. I’m also fucking doing rehab 24/7 to try to give myself that opportunity to play there again.”
The injury left Murray with a brutal set of options in the final weeks of his career: either rush back and try to make it on court for one last appearance at Wimbledon, to finish his career without competing at Wimbledon again or to try to return next year, even though his body is clearly screaming out for him to stop. Murray says he will not be returning next year and he had no plans to compete at the US Open but if he is unable to take to the court in London or Paris, he may have to change his mind.
“I know that there’s more important things in the world than how I finish playing my last tennis match or where I finished playing my last tennis match. But because of what I put into the sport over the last however many years, I would at least like to go out playing a proper match where I’m at least competitive, not what happened at Queen’s. So I can’t say for sure that if I wasn’t able to play at Wimbledon, and I didn’t recover in time to play at the Olympics, that I wouldn’t consider trying to play another tournament somewhere. But if I’m able to play at Wimbledon and if I’m able to play at the Olympics, that’s most likely going to be it.”
While the circumstances are far from ideal, they are the cards that Murray has been dealt. As he has done throughout his 19 years as a professional tennis player, he has responded to adversity by putting his head down, working as hard as he possibly can and trying to find a way through.
“I wish that I was able to go into Wimbledon this year with a proper grass season under my belt and well prepared and ready to go,” said Murray. “I certainly couldn’t be preparing for Wimbledon in a worse way. But maybe this is just how it was meant to happen for me.”
