JOHN LLOYD: It's tough for Andy Murray to keep suffering like this

07/08/2023

JOHN LLOYD: For such a great winner like Andy Murray it’s tough to keep suffering like this… he will have been left shattered by his defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas

Andy Murray will have been left devastated by his loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas
For a player who is such a great winner, suffering like this is difficult to take
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Will this be the last we see of Andy Murray at Wimbledon? If I had to put money on it I would say he will be back but I wouldn’t be confident.

It sounds like he was absolutely shattered by that loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas and it is not easy to come back from that.

It wouldn’t surprise me if he thought he could win Wimbledon this year. Guys like Andy don’t turn up hoping to just ‘have a good run’, it is not in their DNA.

They go on court and think they can never lose and that’s what makes them special. So I think this has hit him really hard, as it should. I don’t know if he is going to carry on after this.

He put a lot of pressure on himself the way his whole year was planned around the grass. He won those two Challengers but then it didn’t happen at Queen’s and then it all goes to Wimbledon.

Andy Murray will have been left hugely disappointed after his defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas

He will have expected to beat Tsitsipas. Players say they don’t look ahead in the draw but I’m sure Andy had a little peak and knew what a good opportunity this was.

Tsitsipas was brilliant, it’s the best match he has ever played on grass, but Murray knows a few years ago he would have found a way to win. He’ll be the biggest critic of himself.

I think he believes, and I’m in agreement, that the top 10 right now is one of the weakest we’ve seen for years, Novak Djokovic aside obviously. They are damn good players but there’s definitely people in that top 10 who Andy would look at and believe he is as good as them if not better.

But can he still squeeze enough out of himself that he can win these matches?

For somebody who has had much success in his career, these setbacks are difficult to take

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I’m not putting myself in his league but I knew when I was done. I packed it in in my press conference after my last match at Wimbledon.

My coach at the time Bob Brett told me to take 24 hours but the heart wasn’t there and I knew if I couldn’t get motivated at Wimbledon then it was over.

Andy, he does have to take the 24 hours — maybe 48 hours or even more — because he’s raw right now. He’s still playing damn well but he is not a mere mortal like I was, he’s a tennis great, and the greats look at themselves differently in terms of expectations. Their expectations are Slams.

If he decides to carry on in the summer — and he may not — from his point of view his next game is the US Open. In the other tournaments he wants to do well to get his seeding up, but he’s really looking to make hits in the Slams.

Talking to people around him, Andy has got plans already lined up for the future, he wants to play the Olympics for example.

If Murray has a bad US Open then it may well prove to be tough for him to carry on after that

But if he has a bad US Open, will we see him next year? It’s going to be tough for him to carry on after that, for someone who has been such a winner.

PS There was a huge moment late in the fourth set in Murray’s match against Tsitsipas when the British player hit a return and it was incorrectly called out. He did not challenge and so it was 30-30 on Tsitsipas’s serve instead of potentially 15-40 – it was a gigantic point.

But soon enough that kind of incident will be a thing of the past. The ATP tour will move to fully automated electronic line calling by 2025, and I think Wimbledon will go along with that. Meaning no more line judges, and no more Hawk-Eye. Personally I don’t like it. For players it is better, because then the line calling is taken care of, its done and dusted. But the viewers love Hawk-Eye, the fans love it here, they’re all clapping and watching it on the big screen. As a form of entertainment we will lose something.

If we had electronic line calling in 1981 then John McEnroe’s ‘You cannot be serious’, would never have happened. The umpire would have just said to John: ‘You can’t argue with a robot.’

I know people say it’s disgraceful behaviour and you don’t want children to see that but it is kind of fun to see Nick Kyrgios go bonkers —he’s box office. Will he be box office if there is no one to argue with?

The sport will be more sanitised and it will be more difficult for the characters of the game to show their personality.

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