A second member of the ‘Big Four' could be preparing to hang up the tennis racket after Andy Murray detailed his Wimbledon and Paris Olympics plans on Thursday. The 37-year-old says he hopes to play at both tournaments, and if that's the case, he'll likely retire from tennis afterwards.
“I feel that I deserve the opportunity to give it until the very last moment to make that decision,” Murray said in a statement released on Thursday, per ESPN's Tom Hamilton. “If I was to be playing on Monday, I may know on Sunday there's no chance that I can play. But also if it is progressing, I'm on the court yesterday and I'm able to go on the court and move around more today and start to do more sort of tennis movements and stuff, I'm not necessarily going to know how that's going to change over the next 48 to 72 hours.”
Murray is just days removed from a procedure that addressed a spinal cyst on June 22. That spinal surgery usually takes six weeks to recover from, per Hamilton, and the Brit is hoping to do it in less than two. After confirming that he would take right to the last to make a decision, that will likely happen shortly before the draw for Wimbledon takes place on Friday.
Andy Murray may have 1 more Wimbledon in him
Murray has struggled at Wimbledon since winning the tournament for the second time in 2016. He advanced to the quarterfinals the year after that, but hasn't been past the third round since.
Still, the tennis world will be holding its breath as one of the greatest players in the history of the United Kingdom chooses whether or not to play its most prestigious tournament.
The three-time Grand Slam champion added: “I want to have that opportunity to play the tournament, and I know that some people might look at that and say: ‘Withdrawing from a tournament late at the last minute isn't the right thing to do.' But I feel like I deserve the opportunity to try to play there again. And I want to have that opportunity, so I'm going to give it as long as I can to see how well I recover.
“I'm going to wait until the last minute to see if I'm going to be able to and I've earned that right to do that. This is not clear-cut where I am 100% going to be ready to play or there is a 0% chance that I can play. That is the situation. I would say it's probably more likely that I'm not able to play singles right now. I'm also doing rehab 24/7 to try to give myself that opportunity to play there again.”
Murray said earlier this year that he didn't plan to play much longer than the summer of 2024, and it does look like Wimbledon and Paris could be the end of his phenomenal career. One of his main hopes is that his last match will be memorable, and not like his last time on the court when he was forced to retire in the second-round of the Queen's Club last week.
“I also don't want the last time that I played on a tennis court to be what happened at Queen's either. Again, I know that there's more important things in the world than how I finish playing my last tennis match or where I finished playing my last tennis match. But because of what I put into the sport over the last however many years, I would at least like to go out playing a proper match where I'm at least competitive, not what happened at Queen's.
“But if I'm able to play at Wimbledon and if I'm able to play at the Olympics, that's most likely going to be it, yeah.”
What a career it's been for Andy Murray, and it could be even more special if he can find a way back to a place where he's won two Grand Slam titles on home soil.
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