Yahoo Sports Tennis: Flu-hit Andy Murray returns to Surrey to seek expert opinion on injured elbow
Andy Murray was due to fly from his second home in Miami this evening to his main base in Surrey. He is looking for expert opinion on the right elbow problem that forced him to withdraw from the Miami Masters.
The injury continues the staccato pattern of Murray’s 2017, especially when combined with a new bout of flu that descended this week. The prognosis remains uncertain. But Leon Smith, the British Davis Cup captain, admitted on Wednesday that his chances of fielding a full-strength team against France in Rouen on April 7-9 are looking increasingly remote.
As Smith explained ahead of next month’s quarter-final, “Having an injury right now – whether it’s Andy or some of the French guys, like Tsonga, Monfils or Gasquet – does throw up the question of whether you try to rush back or do you look ahead?
“I would urge Andy to look ahead to the clay season. I don’t know whether it is a race [to be fit], but it probably is. Still, it’s only a stone’s throw across the water, and it’s not as if it’s a surface he doesn’t want to get ready for. At the end of the week we’ll have more info.”
Murray’s sequence of ailments, which also included a bout of shingles in the immediate aftermath of the Australian Open, tends to suggest that he is overworked. He pushed his way through a sequence of 26 straight victories and five straight titles at the end of 2017 – feats that succeeded in carrying him to the world No 1 ranking for the first time.
Extra time on the match court is unavoidable when you are winning, but his training block in Miami in December has also been described by observers as the hardest yet. There is a sense that Ivan Lendl, Murray’s head coach, could have gone easier on him in hindsight.
Not that Murray himself finds it easy to back off. His enormous appetite for work was evident in Indian Wells last week when he finished a doubles match and then returned to an empty stadium court at 10pm for a bout of serving practice.
There is a good chance that Murray will not play again in Indian Wells, where he lost his opening match last week to Vasek Pospisil. The unique, high-bouncing conditions in the Californian desert always seem to confound him, and he has built up something of a complex about his poor record there. Next year, he will turn 30 and will thus have the right – after more than 600 wins and 12 years on the tour – to skip Masters events that are mandatory for the vast majority of players.
Yet it was not in Indian Wells that Murray first realised he had a genuine elbow issue to worry about. Only last Friday in Miami – in the middle of a training session with compatriot Dan Evans – did he feel enough discomfort to cut the practice short.
On Wednesday, Smith suggested that occasional overuse injuries come with the territory. “It’s not my job to question that,” he replied, when asked about Murray’s training schedule, “because they’ve got everything pretty much right to get him to No 1. It’s an amazing journey. But when you put that much into the last six months of last year, it’s just a lot of tennis. It’s a hard sport. Everyone’s improving so you can’t take your foot off the gas.”
The French Davis Cup team, meanwhile, is expected to be strong despite the probable absence of the three players Smith mentioned above, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gaël Monfils and Richard Gasquet. The singles players will probably be Lucas Pouille and Gilles Simon, with support from the slam-winning doubles pairing of Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert.
