US Edition
We think of Andy Murray as the man with the titanium hip and the iron will. Many words have been expended on his courageous return from career-threatening injury. But now, after this week’s demoralising defeat, it feels like Murray’s mind is crumbling faster than his body.
Murray was up a double-break on Alex de Minaur in Paris on Monday afternoon, with two chances to serve out for victory. Reporters in the press room were already composing their “Murray through to second round” tweets. And yet, as soon as De Minaur brought up his next break point, there was a terrible feeling of inevitability.
Here was the legacy of a grim spell – starting with the Wimbledon epic against Stefanos Tsitsipas – in which Murray has struggled to close out winning positions. The man himself sounded baffled by his slow-motion collapse, saying “I don’t remember that [missing two serve-out chances] happening before.” Even so, many observers felt more saddened than shocked.
There was a sense of pathos in watching a champion of Murray’s calibre, now wrestling forlornly with his demons. The match point at 5-4 up was especially agonising. In a sport that rewards free, flowing movement, Murray looked as cramped as a Sunday-afternoon hacker. Having patted one forehand anxiously back into play, he shanked the next beyond the baseline.
Should we be surprised? Perhaps not. In sport, one side-effect of age is a sense that failure is hovering just over your shoulder. Like the ominous shadow in the MR James ghost story, it stalks you wherever you go.
While youngsters forge ahead without apparent nerves or even much thought, a veteran’s mind tends to start whirring. The temptation is to think about the future (“Will I ever get another chance to win this tournament?”) or the past (“I lost from this position only a month ago against the same guy”). Whereas the trick to sports psychology is to remain locked in the present.
Monday’s results in Paris tell their own story. Three men lost after holding match point. They were 36-year-old Murray, 38-year-old Stan Wawrinka, and 37-year-old Richard Gasquet, who had nominated this as his final event. All three, in their own way, suffered what my parents call “a senior moment”.
So where now for Murray? He admitted after the match that he is struggling to find “that will to win and fight that has always been quite a big, big part of my game. What happened today … that’s not really me.”
And yet, there is reason to believe that he will struggle on regardless. When asked whether he needed to change the support team around him, Murray was quick to stress that his tennis is his own responsibility. Then he paused for a second, before adding: “If I want to keep going, I’m going to need a lot of work.”
Fortunately, Murray has always been a workaholic. Even when he snapped a wrist tendon in 2007, necessitating a three-month spell in a cast, he didn’t react like the average 19-year-old by going to the pub. Instead he sat in front of the TV, obsessively watching matches and making notes on players’ weaknesses.
Murray will know that mental form comes and goes like any other part of the game, whether that be technical, tactical or physical. And he also knows about late-season burnout. This is the third season in a row when he has blown an apparently impregnable position at the Paris Masters. In the previous two instances, he bounced back strongly after the winter break, reaching ATP finals in Sydney in 2022 and Doha this year.
“End-of-season stuff is not easy,” said the British Davis Cup captain Leon Smith, who was sitting in Murray’s player box on Monday night. “Everyone’s been traipsing around, travelling to Asia and back, and they’re tired.
“I actually thought he was doing things much better yesterday. He was dominating on his forehand from the centre of the court really, really well. He played better when he came forwards at the net than previously. He was very aggressive on second-serve return. That’s why it’s a shame he didn’t win, because then you feel those benefits more. When you lose, it’s more difficult to reflect and say, ‘I’ve got a bit better again’, even though I think he has.”
Funny old game, tennis. There’s nothing more frustrating – as any clubbie will know – than moving your opponent all over the court, earning the juiciest of short balls, and then blaring the put-away straight into the back fence. That’s effectively what he did on Monday night, only on a larger scale.
But the trick in these instances is to focus on the 95 per cent that went right. Murray has had the world No13 on the rack twice in the past month. If he keeps playing that way, he should be able to resume his climb up the world rankings, which recently carried him inside the top 40 for the first time since his hip surgery.
And if the frustration becomes too much, he can always cast his mind back to the start of this season. Between Melbourne in January and Indian Wells in March, he won seven straight deciding sets in a defiant sequence, coming back from match point down against Matteo Berrettini, Lorenzo Sonego and Jiri Lehecka.
At the time, Murray put that run down to “the law of averages”, having lost a lot of close matches at the end of 2022. Now he just needs to convince himself that the pendulum can swing again.
Andy Murray's body was supposed to give up on him first – instead it looks like his mind will
Double Wimbledon and Olympic champion is wrestling forlornly with his demons and admits he is finding it hard to summon his old will to win