Andy Murray ‘downbeat with last few months’, but vows to ’empty the tank in the gym’ ahead of 2023

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Andy Murray

The past few months have been disappointing for Andy Murray as his fitness hasn’t been up to scratch, but the former world No 1 knows exactly what he needs to do to get back to the top of the game.

Murray will finish the season just inside the top 50 of the ATP Rankings and, although it was a solid campaign after starting the year at No 134, there was potential to finish higher.

The three-time Grand Slam winner started 2022 by finishing runner-up at the Sydney International and by June he was back in the top 50 after another run to the final at the Stuttgart Open.

He then reached the quarter-final of the Hall of Fame Championships, but he soon started to struggle physically with the continuous cramping during the matches taking its toll.

Although he reached the third round of the US Open and quarter-final in Gijon, he was far from his best and finished his campaign with disappointing early exits from the Swiss Indoors and Paris Masters ending hopes of being in the top 32 ahead of the Australian Open.

Murray admitted after his Paris defeat that he was not happy with his fitness and he echoed those comments in a new interview.

“I was pretty downbeat with the last few months,” he told the Evening Standard. “The last seven or eight tournaments, I had issues with cramping and I’ve never had that consistently. So, I’m extremely disappointed.

“I can deal with losing a tennis match as it’s a difficult sport and you sometimes don’t perform as well as you’d like but there’s no excuse for being let down physically.

“My reflection on the last four or five months is that I’ve not been doing enough work to perform at the level I need to. I need to change that if I want to get back to the top of the game.”

But if anyone thought the 35-year-old would throw in the towel after a disappointing season then they are wide off the mark as Murray already has plans in place to come back stronger in 2023.

“I’m positive about next season and the work I have to do,” he said. “I’ve already started some of that and I need to empty the tank in the next six to eight weeks in the gym and on the practice court.

“I was 130-140 in the world at the start of the season and I’m now inside the top 50. For most players, that’s a really positive year. For me, I don’t view it that way but I did make progress.

“There’s no guarantee I would have won those matches without the cramping but I feel there would have been potentially deeper runs.

“I played quite a lot of tournaments from Wimbledon through to the end of the season. From an endurance perspective, I didn’t cope that well but there’s not been the injuries and niggles, which hasn’t been the case the last few years.”

READ MORE: Andy Murray on retirement: ‘There is no perfect way to finish, and it is just what feels right for you’

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