Andy Murray’s French Open decision confirmed

French Open
Andy Murray during a match

Andy Murray may well have already played his final match at Roland Garros as it has been confirmed that he has withdrawn from the 2023 French Open.

The three-time Grand Slam winner has not played in the main draw of the red-dirt Grand Slam since 2020 and has opted to skip this year’s tournament in order to focus on the grass-court season.

The decision comes on the back of a struggling season on clay at ATP Tour level as he lost in the first round of the Monte Carlo Masters, Madrid Open and Italian Open.

However, he did enjoy success on the ATP Challenger Tour as he won the Aix-en-Provence at the beginning of May as he defeated top seed Tommy Paul in the final to win his first 175K title in nearly 18 years.

But that was followed up with a second-round defeat at the hands of Stan Wawrinka at the Challenger tournament in Bordeaux this week after the match he said with regards to the French Open: “Physically, I was not good the year I played against Wawrinka.

“I’d like to get the opportunity to play it one more time before I stop playing. While I feel physically really good, I would like to play there again.”

The Bordeaux loss, though, no doubt convinced the tennis veteran not to compete at the French Open.

Murray’s best performance at Roland Garros came in 2016 when he finished runner-up to Novak Djokovic and the following year he reached the semi-final. However, he has struggled in Paris since his hip problems became career-threatening at the end of 2017.

He missed the 2018 and 2019 editions and returned in 2020, losing the first round against Wawrinka after receiving a wildcard into the main draw. He then skipped the 2021 and 202 editions.

The former world No 1 will now turn his attention to grass, but the Press Association reports that “the 36-year-old is understood to still be considering which tournaments to target and they may include Surbiton from June 4-11 and then Queen’s from June 19-25”.

Murray is currently 42 in the ATP Rankings and will need to pick up a few weeks during the early stages of the grass-court season if he is to be seeded at Wimbledon.

Wimbledon gets underway on July 3 and there has been rumours that Murray may well end his career at The Championships, although he has also indicated in the past that he still has a lot of goals he wants to achieve before hanging up his racket.

Earlier this year he reached the third round of the Australian Open, defeating 13th seed Matteo Berrettini and Thanasi Kokkinakis in five lung-busting sets while he also finished runner-up to Daniil Medvedev at the Qatar Open in February.

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