Andy Murray admitted that he isn’t “enjoying” his tennis at the moment after suffering another disappointing defeat. The Brit lost to Alex de Minaur 7-6(5) 4-6 7-5 after serving for the match twice in the final set. He later admitted that he hasn’t felt good about his game for the last few months, something that is stopping him from getting behind himself in tough matches.
Murray suffered another first-round exit on Monday as he crashed out of the Rolex Paris Masters following a three-hour battle and he later revealed that he wasn’t getting enjoyment from his game. It was the second time in the last few weeks that he lost to de Minaur after serving for the victory and having a match point, and afterwards the exasperated Brit admitted he couldn’t “remember finishing a match like that before.”
“I don’t feel like I played particularly well today and I’m still in a three-set match with a guy ranked 13 in the world. It’s frustrating,” Murray said. “I’m not really enjoying it just now I would say just in terms of how I feel on the court and how I’m playing.”
The 36-year-old is now 2-5 in matches since the US Open and has been struggling to get satisfaction from his tennis for several months. He continued: “The last five, six months haven’t been that enjoyable, which doesn’t help things, so I need to try and find some of that enjoyment back because playing a match like that there’s not really much positivity there.”
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“When I play a good point, I’m not really getting behind myself and then in the important moments, that will to win and fight that has always been quite a big, big part of my game. Like I said, what happened today, I don’t remember it happening before, but it’s very, very rare. Those sorts of situations happen quite a lot this year, and that’s not really me. It’s not enjoyable.”
Murray had a strong start to the season – reaching the third round of the Australian Open and making the Doha final. But the three-time Grand Slam champion felt that he had stagnated in the second half of the year. “It’s just the way that I’m feeling and sort of playing on the court,” he explained.
“I haven’t felt good about my game for large parts of this year. In the second part of the year obviously a lot of disappointing results and performances. You obviously want to be seeing sort of progress and feeling like you’re getting closer to something and I haven’t really felt like that.”
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“There’s a few small signs over in the States at the beginning of the trip there but certainly nothing that’s been sustainable or consistent. The grass court season was disappointing really. Obviously winning the Challengers is good, but it’s not the level that I necessarily want to be competing at. On the whole it’s not been good.”
Murray also admitted that the frustrations could make him question whether the sacratices were worth it, but the world No 40 still seemed keen to keep working on his game. He continued: “The last few months it’s been more more like that. I hadn’t really felt like that up until the last few months.
“I have found the matches frustrating, the competition not as enjoyable as it should be. And then in practice there’s just a lot of frustration there with my game. Sometimes you play really well in practice and it doesn’t necessarily translate onto the match court, but you at least feel like you’re getting somewhere. Whereas for the most part in practice it’s not been great. A lot of frustration there in training and that’s kind of carrying over into the matches.
“Rather than when I’m on the court competing and it just being about, ‘Let’s try and get the win over the guy in front of you.’ I’m spending a lot of time focusing on myself and how I’m feeling and how my shots are and just getting extremely frustrated with that. It’s not a great place to be on the court.”
The former world No 1 has entered next week’s ATP 250 in Metz and has been named in Britain’s Davis Cup squad for next month’s Finals in Malaga. He is set to make a decision on playing Metz in the coming days and will then “see what happens” with the Davis Cup. But Murray looks set to put in a shift during the off-season if he wants to get back to his best.
Murray added: “If I want to keep going, I’m going to need a lot of work. It’s not like the off-season or whatever, it’s not just going to be like one or two weeks of training to get me to where I need to get to, it’s going to have to be a lot of work and consistent work to give myself a chance of getting back to where I want to be.”
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