Murray Not Expecting Miracles In Melbourne

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 3rd January 2014

ExxonMobil Qatar ATP Open Tennis tournament in Doha

Murray Not Expecting Miracles In Melbourne

epa04005327 Andy Murray of Britain returns the ball to Florian Mayer of Germany during the ExxonMobil Qatar ATP Open Tennis tournament match at the Khalifa Tennis Complex in Doha, Qatar, 01 January 2014. EPA/ALI HAIDER |

With just two ATP World Tour singles matches to his name after a three month absence enforced by back surgery, Wimbledon champion Andy Murray has categorically admitted it would be ‘unrealistic’ to expect to win the Australian Open with such limited opportunity to get acclimated to tennis competition at the highest level.

In the long-term, Murray is convinced the back surgery he underwent at the end of September will benefit both his tennis and quality of life outside of the court. But after losing to German Florian Mayer and winning a relatively meaningless 6-0,6-0 Qatar ExxonMobil Open encounter against 2,129th ranked local teenager Mousa Shanan Zayed, the world no.4 admits he will be grossly underprepared when the Grand Slam action begins in just nine days’ time.

Before leaving on a 14 hours flight from Doha to Melbourne, Murray took stock of his match play since returning, which apart from his singles outings this week amounts to two exhibition run-outs in Abu Dhabi and two doubles matches, and admitted: “I wouldn’t expect to win the Australian Open.

“In terms of expectations I have no idea, to be honest. I wouldn’t like to say whether I’d be happy reaching the second week, or winning it, or whatever. I’ll have to see how the next 10 days or so go. You can get a lot done in that time.”

Murray felt his lack of match fitness contributed to him allowing the match against Mayer slip off the hook. He led by a set and 3-0 before comprehensively losing his momentum to meet a second round exit in three sets.

“The way I was playing for half the match against Mayer I would be very happy with, but being able to maintain that for five sets is tricky,” he stated. “Having a day off between matches would help me and also I’m going to get fitter by playing matches, so there’s a possibility that if I can get through a couple of rounds I’ll start to feel better as the tournament goes on. My body will start to feel better.”

The most match play Murray will get before the start of the Australian Open is a match or two at the exhibition AAMI Classic at Kooyong. He has declined wild card invitations into both the Apia International in Sydney and Auckland’s Heineken Open, sticking by his long-term policy of not playing a full ATP World Tour event in the week before a major.

Instead he will spend the majority of his preparation time in the next week playing sets against top-flight performers on the Melbourne Park practice courts. “That’s one thing I could have maybe done a bit more when I was over in Miami, but I didn’t take more than one day off at a time and I trained for about 10 and a half weeks, so by the end of the training block I wasn’t fresh,” Murray said.

“I was tired. Playing points and sets is the hardest part of what we do. The points and stuff I got at the end of the training block weren’t particularly good because I was fatigued. That kind of showed against Mayer. Towards the end of the second set and the beginning of the third, my intensity definitely dropped a bit – and you can’t do that against these guys.”

Murray concluded: “This week was a good experience for me. It’s quite stressful playing your first match back. Doing all the training stuff is great, but then when you actually go out to play a match again in front of crowds and when you haven’t done it for a while you’re a little bit nervous and it’s different.

“It feels like a new experience again. So just getting back on the court again is good for me. I’ll start to feel more comfortable the more matches I play.”

Topics: 10sballs, Andy Murray, Atp World Tour, Australian Open, Florian Mayer, Sports, Tennis, Tennis News, Wimbledon