Andy Murray declares ‘this sport is just not for me anymore’ as hopes crushed in Qatar
Andy Murray mouthed an ominous message in his demoralising Qatar Open defeat to teenager Jakub Mensik on Wednesday. The 36-year-old’s journey to the Middle East acquired off to the right begin, beating Alexandre Muller to notch his first victory since October, however the reduction wasn’t to final lengthy.
Things had been trying up for Murray when he powered previous Muller in straight units on Tuesday. But he adopted that up with a loss to 18-year-old Mensik, who received two out of three tiebreaks to e book his spot within the quarter-finals.
Murray was chasing the sport by the point he earned a break level at 5-5 within the second set. But when the veteran miscued his shot into the web, his response was telling, as he clearly mouthed: “This game is not for me anymore. It’s not for me anymore, this game.”
Although Murray recovered to take the second-set tiebreak, he ultimately crashed out 6-7 7-6 6-7 towards the lowly 116th-ranked teen.
Asked if there have been any positives to take from his run to the Qatar Open final 16, Murray stated: “Yeah, I think probably in the matches that I played this year, like the one against Grigor [Dimitrov] in Brisbane, sort of felt like I kind of played it the right way.
“I actually did not really feel like I performed a very good match on the Australian Open. Then, yeah, I believe the final two days there was some constructive stuff. I used to be hitting the ball a bit more durable, I used to be attempting to come back ahead to the web and, you understand, I wasn’t the one getting pushed round on a regular basis.”
Murray, who boasts three Grand Slam titles on his CV, has chopped and changed between hinting at retirement and insisting he wants to play on in recent months. Defeat to Tomas Martin Etcheverry at January’s Australian Open saw him admit there was a ‘definite possibility’ he may never play competitively in Melbourne again.
Leading up to the Qatar Open, however, the Glasgow-born veteran insisted he is not ready to walk away, stating: “I need to hold taking part in simply now, so I’m not going to cease.”
Murray had been on a torrid run earlier than defeating Muller in Qatar. Since the Swiss Indoors final October, he suffered consecutive first-round defeats on the Paris Masters, the Brisbane International, the Australian Open, the Open Sud de France and the Open 13.
Hip surgical procedures in 2018 and 2019 have hampered Murray’s motion on the courtroom and he has not made it past the third spherical of a Grand Slam since combating again to health.