Andy Murray has two reasons for being ‘downbeat’ over 2022 season

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Andy Murray has confessed that he is “downbeat” over the last few months of his 2022 season despite having a positive year in the eyes of others. The three-time Grand Slam champion rose from No 134 in the world back inside the top 50 but admitted that his endurance wasn’t where it should be as he aimed even higher for 2023.

Murray has enjoyed his best season since 2016 as he earned his most match wins in a single year since the season he won his second Wimbledon crown and became world No 1, finishing 2022 with a 26-19 record. The former world No 1 saw his ranking rise by around 90 spots but has been left with a bad taste in his mouth after ending the year by crashing out in the first round of the Paris Masters after serving for a straight-sets victory.

The 46-time title winner has now admitted that two things cost him a successful second half of the season – his cramping and his lack of training – as he sets his sights on making up for lost time with a monster training block over the off-season. “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.” While Murray is no stranger to dealing with injuries, he said there was no reason for him to be dealing with physical issues this year.

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The 35-year-old continued: “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.” But he was already bidding to change that, having previously admitted he had just two gym sessions between the US Open and the end of the season.

“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,” Murray confessed. The world No 46 had already started putting in some of the work and was planning a big training block in Florida with coach Ivan Lendl for later in the off-season.

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He added: “I’m positive about next season and the work I have to do. 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.”

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