Andy Murray Withdraws From Wimbledon Amidst Recovery From Surgery

Andy Murray, who has won Wimbledon twice, has pulled out this year so to not stall his recovery process. Murray had worked through a hip injury and has been doing what he can to heal from hip surgery in January. He had planned to play, but on the evening before the tournament, he has withdrawn and posted a statement on his Facebook page.

The New York Times says that Murray had hoped to be farther along in his recovery and doesn’t want to have a setback.

“I’ve made significant progress in practice and matches over the last 10 days, but after lengthy discussions with my team, we’ve decided that playing best-of-five-set matches might be a bit too soon in the recovery process. We did everything we could to try to be ready in time,” he said.

Andy Murray is the seventh man to withdraw from Wimbledon over the last week (plus one woman). Murray has pulled out of several events within the last year, including the Australian Open in January, and that event is what pushed him to finally have surgery after fighting hip pain for a year.

At a press conference on Saturday, Murray said he was still planning to play his first match at Wimbledon on Tuesday against Benoît Paire.

Andy Murray Pulls Out of Wimbledon https://t.co/Ja8k1mmKjJ pic.twitter.com/n0EmeCsmfr

— Oxygencd (@oxygencdcom) July 2, 2018

Murray said he would play unless he woke up not feeling well. But he said it’s hard to recover and return to the top level of tennis, and it’s been taxing on his body.

“In other sports when you come back, you don’t tend to come back and be competing against the best in the world immediately, like, for five sets or three sets, whatever. You would build up a little bit, play 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and so on.”

Murray says he will continue training on a hard court surface in the hope of being able to play in the U.S. Open.

BBC reported that Murray expressed disappointment, but said it was too much too soon after his surgery, particularly to play on grass.

“It is with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that I’ll be withdrawing from Wimbledon this year. We’ve decided that playing best-of-five-set matches might be a bit too soon in the recovery process.”

The BBC tennis correspondent, Russell Fuller, says it’s not worth the risk for Andy Murray to return to grass so soon, and he’s better off focusing on the U.S. hard court season.

“There was no way he could be truly competitive here at Wimbledon, and the decision not to play has to be in his best long-term interests.”

Andy Murray’s next event will be in Washington at the end of next month.