Andy Murray admits there are some shots he isn’t even able to practise just a week before the start of Wimbledon.
The two-time champion had to pull out of Queen’s last week after injuring himself playing in Stuttgart and has been practising with Ivan Lendl down at Wimbledon. He says the plan is still to play, but he admits the next couple of days are vital.
“The next couple of days are pretty important for me,” he said. “The injury that I had is improving. I've had it rescanned since then and it's progressing in the right way. But you can probably work out from the nature of the injury which shots it is that I've been struggling with.
“In the next few days, I'll start to increase that and test it out. Hopefully it's recovered sufficiently. I'm feeling better than I was on the Sunday afternoon, evening. Training has been going well in some aspects.
"With the nature of the injury, it's not stopped me from practising. I just need to start to play some points I’ll see where I'm at.”
Murray is adamant, though, that fighting to the end in the Stuttgart final against Matteo Berrettini did nothing to make his problems worse. “The last few years I've dealt with a few different issues,” Murray said. ”I didn't feel like I was doing myself any more damage.
“The injury that I have is not a significant injury, but it's an injury that is tricky for tennis players. You need to manage them well. I've done that so far. Hopefully that will pay dividends come Monday.”
If anything, Murray feels his problems are getting harder because he is starting to do better. “It's frustrating but I played nine matches in two weeks - I haven't done that since 2016,” he said. “That's my fault because my performances haven't been consistent enough.
“So yeah, it's frustrating to be in this position in the build-up to Wimbledon. The positive for me is that: that I've dealt with certainly worse issues in the last few years and handled them okay.”
Murray has always kept his cards keenly close to his chest with regards to his health and recent hitting partner Dan Evans did spot one encouraging sign. “He's happy to have Ivan back and it looks like it's really working,” he said. “They were smiling. The pair of them.”
