London: Andy Murray announced his latest withdrawal from a tournament on Wednesday, continuing the trend of a season in which the three grand-slam winners of last year — Murray, Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka — have all struggled to drag their battered bodies on to the match court.
Murray will not be playing at Cincinnati, the Masters event that begins next week, as he tries to prepare himself for the first round of the US Open on August 28-29. The obstacle, once again, is the damaged hip, which restricted his movement throughout Wimbledon. One upshot is that Murray can now be certain of losing the No 1 ranking before the first ball is hit at Flushing Meadows.
“I’m continuing to work hard on the court with the aim of being in New York,” said Murray, who will almost certainly arrive at the US Open without any warm-up matches on hard courts except for the practice sets that he squeezes in the previous week.
It is an unsatisfactory arrangement for a man who thrives on rhythm and confidence, but his recalcitrant body has left him with little choice. The option of surgery has been ruled out for the moment, but it is anyone’s guess how the past couple of months of Murray’s season will look once he has tested his fitness in New York.
There remains a chance that he might emulate Djokovic and Wawrinka by calling time early on 2017. The concept of a tennis sabbatical has suddenly become fashionable, after Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal used it to great effect last year. The two senior members of the Big Four have proceeded to share three grand-slams and four Masters titles between them this season.
Twenty-year-old Alexander Zverev — who won in Rome — has been the only man to break up their dominance at the biggest events.
Murray’s hip problems also explain why his name was absent on Wednesday from the press release sent out by the organisers of the Laver Cup. This is a Ryder Cup-style exhibition event, scheduled for the weekend of September 22 to 24, which will pit a European team led by Federer and Nadal against an American line-up featuring Milos Raonic and Jack Sock.
The appearance fees are understood to be lucrative and Murray has not formally ruled out the possibility of making a late appearance. In theory, he could sneak in as one of the “captain’s picks” available to the European captain Bjorn Borg.
In practice, though, he is unlikely to take on any extra commitments unless the US Open goes swimmingly — in a physical sense, at least. And that seems unlikely after a year in which he has already suffered from shingles, multiple bouts of flu and a torn elbow tendon. The five successive tournaments that Murray won at the end of last year, thus securing the No 1 ranking, are beginning to feel like ancient history.
Perhaps the loss of the top spot will galvanise Murray, for he has worn it more like an albatross than a crown. Since he overtook Djokovic in November by winning their head-to-head showdown at the O2 Arena, he has lifted just one more title — and that came in Dubai, more than five months ago. His win ratio for 2017 now stands at just 71 per cent, lower than any annual figure he has delivered since he was a teenager.
