Tennis

Andy Murray opens up on impact Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic had on body


Andy Murray says he is not sure whether the exploits of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic forced him to put his body through undue strain and contributed to him needing two hip operations.

Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have dominated men’s tennis in the last 15 years, winning 51 of the last 59 Grand Slams.

Of the eight they failed to claim, Murray captured three of them, winning twice at Wimbledon and the US Open.

And for a considerable time, it was the ‘Big Four’ as the quartet consistently reached the latter stages of tournaments.

But after becoming world No 1 at the end of 2016, Murray’s physical condition took a turn of the worst.

At Wimbledon 2017, Murray hobbled out of the tournament after losing to Sam Querrey due to his hip and had surgery in January 2018.

Murray made a return to action but struggled to cope with the pain and considered retiring before deciding to have a hip resurfacing operation to finally solve the issue.

And so far it has worked with Murray winning the doubles titles at Queen’s Club in June and then his first singles trophy since Dubai Open in 2017 when he won the European Open in Antwerp.

Speaking following the premiere of his upcoming documentary about the past two years, Murray spoke to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and was asked whether trying he pushed himself too hard in an attempt to stay with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.

“I don’t know if it was because of them or if it was my mentality,” he said.

“Or what I believed really that the harder that I worked the better I would be, which is quite a simplistic way of looking at things and I now realise that it’s not the correct way of looking at things.

“So yeah, I would have done things differently when I was younger.

“I would have taken more breaks. I would have worked a bit smarter.

“I would have always had to have an operation like this for my hip at some stage but I probably could have delayed that by a number of years had I trained and done things slightly differently and I guess that is stuff, we all look back at things that we did when we were younger and kind of regret them or would have changed things, but I didn’t know that at the time.

“I know now and hopefully I can pass on my experience and advice to other athletes who have been through it or are thinking about how they should be training and doing things themselves.”





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