Well, its been ages since I did a post on here, so I figured it was high time I did another, which will cover the progress of Andy Murray's rehab from his hip surgery back in January this year.
And its safe to say that the last year or so has not been kind to Andy in tennis terms, as he has struggled with illness and injury and we all know that he has not played a competitive tour level match since his quarter final defeat at Wimbledon last year, which is now 10 months ago.
So, what will happen with Andy in the future and how will his rehab progress? Well, only he can answer that himself but let's take a look so far at what has happened.
THE INJURY
Well, Andy's injury as we all know happened as the result of the rigours of his campaign at the French Open, which ended in defeat to Stan Wawrinka in the semi finals. After this, Andy played the grass court season where he suffered a shock defeat to Jordan Thompson, who was the first Australian player to defeat him in an ATP tour match. And after this, Andy went on to play Wimbledon despite fears of reports of a lingering hip injury, he declared himself fit enough to play.
However, as the tournament wore on, it was evident that Andy's movement was less than perfect and he had been seen various times limping in between points on the court. And it all came to ahead against Sam Querrey in the quarter finals, where Andy managed to put himself in a winning position at two sets to one up. However, it was then apparent in the 4th set that things weren't going too well, as Andy was seen limping quite prominently between points and after Querrey levelled the match, he dominated Andy in the 5th set to end his title defence.
And we have seen Andy play on the ATP tour since, although he has since played a couple of exhibition matches, one against Roger Federer in Glasgow, where he showed encouraging signs in his movement and even managed to take a set off Roger before losing the match. However, Andy, while practising in Abu Dhabi, decided to participate in an exhibition match there against the Spaniard, Roberto Bautista-Agut, which ended in a straight sets defeat and throughout the match, Andy looked worse than ever with his movement being very sluggish and he won only four games before being beaten by Bautista-Agust.
SURGERY AND REHAB COMPLICATIONS
And in January 2018, after withdrawing from the Brisbane Open and the Australian Open and realising that his hip rehab wasn't working, he finally decided to go under the knive and have the hip surgery, he was up until this point, reluctant to undergo. The results were a success with Andy being in good spirits, he would undergo a period of 14 weeks rehab before he could get back on the practice courts with the hope of him being ready in time to play the grass court season.
However after the initial few months, things since then have been reported by different media sources that Andy's surgery rehab, has not been going as well as he would have hoped as there were talks that Andy would even try and make it back for one of two events on the ATP challegner tour in Glasgow last month and Loughborough next week. However since then, Andy has chosen to play neither of these events and continue with his rehab and there has been reports that he has not been seen on the practice courts for weeks now. This suggests that the rehab has suffered a setback and may even put Andy's return in time for the grass court season, in serious doubt.
SO WHERE DOES ANDY GO FROM HERE???
Well, this is a million dollar question, where will Andy go from here? And the answer is of course, I don't know, nor does anyone else except Andy himself. What we do know is that Andy has been playing his cards close to his chest and has not spoken publicly about his rehab for some time now with previous updates being more positive than recent media speculation.
What we also know is that Andy made the annoucement a little while back that he intends to make his return to the tour in Holland at the Libdema open on the grass courts and play at Queens club in London, a week after before gearing up for Wimbledon. However, as I said, this now appears to be in serious doubt but then again Andy has yet to give a real update on his current progress. But one thing I do know is, even if Andy choses not to play in Holland or at Queens in London, he will do all he can not to miss Wimbledon, which surely would be a real blow to him not to play at his favourite tournament.
SHOULD ANDY ADAPT HIS GAME STYLE???
Another thing that has been the subject of discussion is should Andy adapt his game style for when he returns? This reason being of course is that Andy's game style is built on defensive play, which inevtiably requires him to be fully fit and to have fast, superior movement in order to play long rallies. And given that Andy has had to undergo the knive on his hip means that his defensive style of play may cause more damage to it than good given the mileage required to play that type of game.
So, this may require Andy to remodel his game and find a way to play shorter rallies and end points quicker to save energy. The problem with this idea is that this late into Andy's career, it would be very tough for him to remodel his game completely. And not only that but Andy doesn't have the best 1st serve, as he often in the past has struggled to get his 1st serve percentage up over 60% and in some cases it has dropped as low as into the 40's, which is nowhere near good enough to take on the best players in the world. Roger Federer on the other hand can do it but he has a far better serve and a more attacking style, which if Andy could adapt to, would make things easier for him but his 1st serve still remains his main Achilles heel that would make this game style difficult for him to adopt.
SO WILL WE SEE ANDY RETURN TO THE TOUR???
Well, I can only hope the answer to this in the long term is yes, because Andy has had a very frustrating year and a half behind him already given that he reached the summit of the game to become World No.1, only to suffer from injury and illness, which lead to his downfall. And right now Andy's ranked inside the Top 50, so if and when he returns to the tour, he will be ranked even lower and perhaps drop down into the Top 100 or even 200.
And while Andy may very well receieve wildcards to enter events, he will still be at the mercy of the draw in tournaments and he could very well end up facing the likes of Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal in the 1st round! And it has to be said that Andy will definitely be up against it when he will take on players that he use to beat with ease that now will be in a different position as they will fancy their chances of beating him.
But we can only hope that Andy will make his return and when does that he can progressively rebuild his game again. It may take quite some time for this to happen and a string of early defeats may well be a strong possibility that Andy may have to endure at first but hopefully if all goes well, Andy can build himself up again and start competing again at the top of the game for the biggest tournaments.
SIGN OFF
Right, so that's it for now and I will try and do some posts on here once the French Open get's under way, which is now just under two weeks away!
So, until then its bye fer now.
