His perfect run in men’s doubles came to an abrupt halt at Eastbourne.
Top seeds Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah of Colombia – the pair Murray beat on the way to winning the Fever-Tree Championships title last week – took just 1 hr 4 min to score a comprehensive 6-2, 6-4 revenge win against Murray and new partner Marcelo Melo.
It gives Murray a couple of extra days to rest before pairing up with Pierre-Hugues Herbert at Wimbledon, but he has been told that his problems could come in the second week at SW19 if he persists with plans also to play in the mixed.
“I must decide if I’m definitely 100 per cent going to play,” he said.
“I have spoken to a couple of the guys who don’t play mixed doubles all the time, and they were just saying if you get a couple of bad days of rain, you could end up having to play best-of-five doubles followed by a mixed doubles.
“That can happen a couple of days in a row.
“I need to be certain that I’m ready to do that and I think I should be okay. Ideally the weather will be good and you don’t have to worry too much about that, but we’ll see.
“I actually spoke a little bit with my team about that this morning. I’ll try and decide on it, and a partner, probably by tomorrow.”
With forecasts set fair and Murray very much smitten by the doubles bug, it is more likely than not that he will take the risk.
The defeat showed, though, that despite his stunning debut at Queen’s with Feliciano Lopez the format might not be quite such a breeze against determined doubles specialists.
“I don’t care whether they take me seriously as a doubles player or not, to be honest,” he smiled. “I’ll give them good matches, I’m sure, when I play against them.”
