Andy Murray opens up about struggle with hip injury, advances in Brisbane

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  • An emotional Andy Murray told spectators on Pat Rafter Arena he wasn’t sure how long his tennis career was going to last but the former world No. 1 plans on enjoying what’s left of it as he continues to bounce back from a serious hip injury.

    Murray, who defeated James Duckworth 6-3, 6-4 in his Brisbane first round on Tuesday, has been dealing with this hip problem for past year and a half and underwent surgery 12 months ago in Australia.

    The Scot, currently ranked 240 in the world, admits he still feels pain and discomfort in his hip, but notes there’s been a lot of progress since he started his comeback in Queens last June.

    “It’s not easy to sort of sum up in one sentence or one answer, it’s been a really hard 18 months, a lot of ups and downs, it was tricky just to kind of get back on the court competing again. So I’m happy I’m back out here again, I want to try to enjoy it as much as I can, just try and enjoy playing tennis as much as I can. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last but we’ll see,” Murray said on court after his win over Duckworth.

    Later in his press conference, the 31-year-old explained how it took him time to wrap his head around the seriousness of his injury.

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  • “I don’t feel particularly like apprehensive and stuff about my hip as such today, just because I’ve trained on it more and been here playing practice sets with guys, and I’ve just had a lot longer to get used to it, whereas when I was playing again in kind of June, July time last year, my hip was pretty sore,” said Murray, who takes on Russia’s Daniil Medvedev in the second round on Wednesday.

    “I hadn’t really practiced much. I hadn’t played matches for a long time, and psychologically it was difficult. I was concentrating more on that than actually playing the match or my tactics. I was thinking a lot about my hip whilst I was playing; whereas, today I didn’t really think about it at all, just concentrating on the match.”

    Murray played 12 matches in 2018, winning seven of them, and ended his season in September after making the quarter-finals in Shenzhen. He is not pain-free yet, and confessed that even walking can cause him discomfort – a fact that was not easy for him to digest at first.

    “There are certain shots and certain positions on the court, certain movements that I make that are worse than others,” said Murray.

    “Weirdly enough, walking is actually worse than some of the movements I have to make on the court, which is odd, and that’s something that is frustrating for me at times, because I don’t like walking around limping. Like when I see a video of myself doing that, that’s been one of the things that’s got me down quite a lot the last year or so because I feel like as an athlete I should be able to do that properly. And yeah, so that’s something that’s kind of taken a bit of time to get used to.

    “But like I said, on the court today, yeah, I was in a little bit of discomfort, but I don’t feel like it hampered too many of my shots or my movements or anything and I was able to go out there and compete pretty well for the most part. So try to recover well tonight and then see how I come back tomorrow. But it was a good start.”

    Another thing Murray has had to adjust to was the necessary changes he needed to make to his warm-up and training routines.

    “I used to spend a lot more time kind of practicing and in the gym and stuff. So in the offseason, like a three-hour session would kind of be normal, like on the court, I would do a few of them per week, and in the offseason I was not really practicing more than an hour and a half at any one time,” he added.

    “And before practices, yeah, spending more time getting warmed up before I get on the court and doing a lot of pool work and stuff and trying to work on my range of motion and things like that before I get out there.

    “So I’ve had to change a lot of things in how I prepare and how I do things, which is difficult when you’ve been doing things a certain way for a long time and it’s been successful, to make that change is difficult. But didn’t really have a choice, so that helped and made it a bit easier.”


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    Couple of highlights from todays match.. Which one is your favourite 1,2 or 3?

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