He’s (nearly) back! Andy Murray all but confirms singles return

Andy Murray has given the most positive message yet that he’ll be playing competitive singles very soon during a press conference at the Citi Open in Washington

Andy Murray was speaking ahead of his first round doubles match, in which he’s partner his brother Jamie, when he said that there is a possible scenario where he would enter the singles at the Cincinnati Masters 1000 tournament which starts on the 11th August.

Murray said, “What I’m doing here is, for the most part, I’m going to practise singles and play doubles to compete and then just each week I’m just going to see. If I keep progressing and I feel good in three weeks’ time, then I’ll play singles as soon as I’m ready. I’m not quite ready at this week, but I hope at some stage soon I will be,”

He then went on to say, “Best-case scenario probably would be Cincinnati, and then if I wasn’t able to play in Cincinnati, there’s a good chance I would probably wait until after New York because I wouldn’t want my first tournament to be playing best of five [sets]”

Murray was filmed yesterday playing what looked like a full pace singles against young American Denis Kudla and his movement looked as near to normal as we’ve seen since his hip injury surfaced a few years ago.

The last competitive singles match Murray played was at the Australian Open in January when he lost in 5 sets to Wimbledon semi-finalist Robert Bautista Agut. Then followed a surprisingly emotional press conference where Murray basically said he might never play again. Fortunately Murray then followed doubles legend Bob Bryan as he underwent and successfully recovered from a hip surgery which gave the Scot encouragement that he could do the same.

Look ahead to the rest of 2019 with our guides to every tournament on the ATP Tour and the WTA Tour. If you can’t visit the tournaments you love then do the next best thing and read our guide on how to watch all the ATP Tour matches on television in 2019. To read more amazing articles like this you can explore Tennishead magazine here or you can subscribe for free to our email newsletter here