Persisting with a metallic hip at 36 may puzzle many, yet Murray consistently discovers renewed reservoirs of determination.
Andy Murray’s tennis season has ended with the news he is withdrawing from next week’s Davis Cup finals on account of a minor shoulder tweak.
It is an appropriately downbeat conclusion to a year which promised so much, only to come unstuck when Murray lost to Stefanos Tsitsipas at Wimbledon amid a flurry of what-might-have-beens.
He never quite recovered from that setback, winning only six more matches over the remaining four months of the season. Then, last week, he announced he had split with his coach and mentor Ivan Lendl for the third and presumably the last time.
It feels like every year closes with a reading of the tea-leaves where Murray’s future is concerned. Forging on with a metal hip at the age of 36 seems baffling to many people, especially for a man who has won Wimbledon and climbed to No 1 in the world.
And yet, each time we question his commitment, Murray finds another injection of effort. That’s where he is again this winter: back on the training court in the search for marginal gains. (Even if his dicky shoulder might interrupt the process this week.)
From the outside, last week’s coaching news might have sounded like a harbinger of doom. The departure of Lendl, the man who oversaw all Murray’s greatest achievements, could be read as an admission of defeat.
And yet, insiders say the exact opposite is true. By discarding Lendl, Murray is actually signalling his determination to do more technical work – a process that he has already begun by hiring Canadian guru Louis Cayer for the off-season. He believes that he can still improve, even at this late stage of his career.
This is not the first time Murray has collaborated with Cayer, who helped to rebuild his serve in the 2015-16 off-season. Cayer is not someone you take on tour for weeks at a time, partly because he prefers working with doubles players, but he is a master of biomechanics. This makes him a very different sort of coach to Lendl, who once said: “I don’t do any technique because I suck at it.”
Lendl has also tended to be an occasional presence of late. Because of his hatred for travel, he has only really shown up for the majors in recent seasons. By the end, it felt like there was something superstitious about his presence in Murray’s player box, as if he were the human equivalent of a pair of lucky socks.
Yes, Murray will probably feel a little naked without the stony-faced Lendl staring down at him during January’s Australian Open. But he also knows that magical thinking will not cut it. Hard work is the only solution if he wants to push his ranking high enough to be seeded at the majors. It helps that the essential problem is relatively easy to diagnose. Murray has been struggling to win quick points and dispatch neutral balls – an issue that can probably be fixed through sheer repetition.
In all probability, Murray was not going to feature in Thursday’s Davis Cup quarter-final against Serbia in any case. Team captain Leon Smith could potentially call up another singles player – perhaps British No 4 Liam Broady – to cover the gap. But the line-up for the match, which is being staged at a basketball stadium in Malaga, looks fairly clear in any case.
Barring injury, accident or unexpected plot twist, Cam Norrie will take on world No 1 Novak Djokovic, with Jack Draper playing the second singles slot, and the seasoned doubles specialists Neal Skupski, and Joe Salisbury coming in for the deciding rubber if required.
