Eight of the past 10 Grand Slams have passed without Andy Murray in the men’s singles draw, including two of the last three US Opens. This time one year ago, he was playing the Rafael Nadal Open, a Challenger event in Mallorca, Spain, while Nadal himself won the 2019 US Open.
This is all, of course, after a lingering right-hip injury and two surgeries—one in January 2018, and a second in January 2019—threatened to end his career.
An undisputed champion both in the game and in the global fight for social justice, Murray was again an ATP singles champ in October, back atop the mountain against all odds. The Briton defeated Stan Wawrinka in a three-set battle of former US Open winners to claim his 46th career ATP title, at the European Open in Antwerp, Belgium.
Even Murray himself was surprised by the result. He thought he could eventually return to that level, and never doubted his ball-striking ability, but the Scot anticipated a longer lag in his movement and agility skills. More impressive was the fact that Murray went three sets in each of the last three rounds, including comebacks from a set down in the semis and final.
The title came at the close of a stretch of seven tournaments from August to October, including a run of four in consecutive weeks, culminating with his Antwerp win. In hindsight, Murray knows he pushed a bit too hard during that stretch, as a fresh pelvic injury caused him to shut it down once again after an opening-round victory for Great Britain in November’s Davis Cup Finals. While rehabbing, he missed the start of the 2020 season, including the Australian Open.
“After the latest setback in November, I was pretty gutted, to be honest, about that,” Murray said in a Western & Southern Open press conference. “It was, like, I'm back, I can play, I can compete, I can win tournaments and stuff, and then I got a setback, and I didn't really know whether that was going to get better or not. So that was hard.”
Like so many things in Murray’s career—his journey through five major finals before his first Grand Slam title, his four-hour, 54-minute victory over Novak Djokovic to win that first Slam at the 2012 US Open, the 14-point service game that sealed his maiden Wimbledon title—the Scot’s prolonged injury comeback has been an adventure.
He was last a Grand Slam contender in 2017, when he reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals “on one leg,” as he later put it.
“I was the No. 1 tennis player in the world, and I couldn’t walk anymore,” he reflected in an Amazon documentary released last fall, Andy Murray: Resurfacing. “I couldn’t put my socks on.”
After missing the US Open Series that summer, Murray entered the New York main event but pulled out two days before it began, saying the hip was “too sore for me to win the tournament.”
In January 2018, he underwent his first hip surgery. After making a measured return on home British soil (though he did not play Wimbledon), Murray produced another signature moment in a career full of them. At the 2018 Citi Open, after he toiled until after 3 a.m. to defeat Marcus Copil, he broke down in a heavy stream of tears from his courtside bench. Many interpreted those as tears of joy after a hard-fought victory, vindication of his year-long journey back to competition. But as he later revealed in his documentary, it was exactly the opposite.
“I was really, really emotional at the end of the match because I feel like this is the end for me. My body just doesn’t want to do it anymore, and my mind doesn’t want to push through the pain barrier anymore… I’m sorry that I can’t keep going.”
He did manage to play the 2018 US Open, where he reached the second round, after which he entered just one more event on the year.
Murray’s next heartbreaking moment came at the 2019 Australian Open, when he announced that he may be forced to retire. It prompted an outpouring of love from the tennis community, crystallized in a farewell video with well-wishes from many of the game’s top players. An emotional Murray watched the montage in Melbourne Arena after a heroic, five-set loss against Roberto Bautista Agut, in which he won a pair of tiebreaks to fight out of a two-set hole.
Happily, that farewell proved premature. At the recommendation of Bob Bryan, Murray in January 2019 underwent a “Birmingham hip” (BHR) operation, a conservative alternative to a full hip replacement that involves smoothing the hip by placing a metal cap over the femur.
Murray’s eventual return was fitting of a champion. Easing in with doubles play, he claimed the Queens Club title that June in his first event back. The victory, alongside Feliciano Lopez, was sparked by a first-round upset of the current world No. 1 men’s doubles team, Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal. Murray’s doubles adventure—seven tournaments in all—also included a third-round run with Serena Williams in the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon.
It was all building towards an eventual singles return—something no tennis player with a metal hip had ever managed. And though Murray skipped the 2019 US Open, he competed in the US Open Series and soon peaked with that cherished title in Antwerp before crashing back down.
Mired in another stint of rehab, Murray was afforded a long runway back to competition through the COVID-19 suspension. All indications are that he’s put that time to great use.
Back on the court for the Western & Southern Open in New York, Murray defeated Frances Tiafoe and world No. 7 Alex Zverev—both in three sets—before falling to Milos Raonic in the Round of 16. (Raonic has since stormed to the final, dropping just one set along the way.)
“Would have liked to have played a bit better, but physically I was good,” Murray said after getting past Tiafoe, a sentiment he applied to all three matches (outside of a scintillating opening set vs. Zverev). “That is the most important thing for me, because that hasn't been the case for the last 10 months.”
Having gone through the three years of on-and-off rehab, it’s a different Murray that returns to the US Open, where he’s been to eight quarterfinals in 13 career appearances. Though expectations may be tempered, his standards stay the same.
“My opinion is that you should set yourself the best-in-the-world standards for everything that you do, because then it means that you're going to prepare properly for tournaments, you're going to train hard, you're going to take care of all of the details, because that's what the best in the world do, whatever job it is. That's why they are the best," he said after bowing out of the relocated Cincinnati event.
“If, on the match courts, you fall short of that, you know, I'd rather fall short of the best-in-the-world standards rather than sort of accept, OK, I'm going to play [to the level of No.] 80, 100 in the world, that's going to be my standard this week. And if I play at that level, I'm happy.
“I'd rather say, ‘Let's try to play like the best in the world. Let's set standards like you're the best in the world.’ And even if you fall short of that, I can live with that a little bit.”
The best-of-five format at the US Open will be a new challenge for Murray, who has not won consecutive Grand Slam matches since 2017. But beating Top-10 players like Zverev without his best stuff certainly bodes well for his prospects.
“I think, if I can stay healthy, I’ll have some more good moments on the tennis court,” he added. Whether or not such moments come now, at the 2020 US Open, Murray’s already hit his biggest short-term target.
“I'm feeling quite good on the court physically, in terms of my hip. When I spoke to my team a couple months ago, that was really all I wanted. I wanted to get hopefully to the US Open feeling pretty pain-free so that I could go out and play and enjoy playing in a Grand Slam again.”
It's easy to forget that Murray is still relatively young at 33, the same age as world No. 1 Djokovic (Murray is exactly seven days older, born on May 15, 1987) and 11 months younger than world No. 2 Rafael Nadal. Those two men are currently setting the best-in-the-world standards the Scot referenced, winners of each of the last eight Grand Slams between them.
In 2017, Murray pulled out of the US Open because he knew he couldn't win it. He had every reason to sit out this time around, too—the pandemic, the restrictions of the New York "bubble," the pounding his hip will take on the blue hard courts at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
But Andy Murray is back. Would he really be here if he didn't think he could leave with the trophy?
