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THE CHAMPIONSHIPS WIMBLEDON

July 2, 2017

Andy Murray

Wimbledon, London, England

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You and Kim must be thrilled with your news. I wanted to know, will this be an added stress at all this year in the tournament?
ANDY MURRAY: No. I wouldn't have thought so. We're both obviously very happy and looking forward to it.

Q. According to Roger, you are very good in the first week, and you use it to get back in shape again. Will it be so simple?
ANDY MURRAY: No. I mean, obviously no matches are easy. The last few days have been very good. Practice each day has got a little bit better. It's been slightly stop-start preparations. But each day I've felt better.

But a little bit like at the French Open, where maybe I didn't come in as well-prepared, I still found a way with each match to feel a bit better, and built confidence each day.

So, you know, I'm hoping that's the case here.

Q. When it comes to playing, are you able to get in a mental zone that blocks out other things? Are you going to be able to stop thinking about your family life when you're playing tennis?
ANDY MURRAY: Well, I mean, I've had family the whole time I've been playing tennis, so yeah, I'll be fine dealing with that. It's certainly not a distraction in the slightest.

Q. With the injury you had the last week or two, was there any stage where you feared you might not even be able to play here?
ANDY MURRAY: I mean, you never know. I haven't been in that sort of position too often, like only a few days before a slam, and not felt good at all. Hasn't really happened to me much.

Obviously this is an extremely important tournament, so you worry a little bit. It's a little bit stressful if you can't practice for a few days, you really want to be preparing, you know, training as much as you can to get ready and make you feel better, especially when you hadn't had any matches.

But, you know, just tried to think positively. I tried to make the best decisions along with my team to give myself the best chance to feel good on Monday. I feel like I've done that.

Q. This is not your first time going into a Grand Slam as the defending champion. How does that maybe feel different than when you are attacking a Grand Slam when you're not the defending champion? Does it feel different this time around than the previous time?
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, obviously a little bit more experience, a bit older now. Yeah, hopefully I'm able to deal with things better this time round.

But, I mean, really once you get out there, I don't feel like I'm coming in trying to defend something. I'm going out there trying to win Wimbledon again. I want to try to win the competition, you know.

Maybe adds a little bit extra pressures. Maybe a few more nerves especially at this slam with the way the scheduling is, that you're the first one out there on Centre Court. You know, you feel like you're opening up the tournament a little bit, and that adds a few more nerves.

But I feel okay. You know, I've felt fairly calm the last few days, considering how I've been feeling.

Q. What actually is the hip problem? Was it something you, like, suffered in training or was it just some pain that came on?
ANDY MURRAY: No, I've had hip problems since I was very young. You know, it's not something new to me. It's just been very sore the last few weeks. It was giving me quite a lot of trouble moving to certain shots and getting into certain positions.

So that was why I needed to take the break, to try and give it a chance to settle down, calm down a bit. You know, spent a lot of time with my physio and doing some extra exercises in my warmup, strengthening exercises, a lot of stuff to try to loosen off that area.

It's felt much better the last few days.

Q. There's four players, yourself and three others, who can finish this tournament at world No. 1. Been quite a while since it's been that close. Does that add an extra element of, I don't know, pressure?
ANDY MURRAY: I think it certainly could do, maybe potentially more towards the end of the event, if there was quite a few players left in, and there's maybe matchups that really influence it.

I don't think loads of the guys -- for me, I'm not thinking about that right now. That's not what my focus is. But maybe if, you know, there's a match later in the tournament where you know if you win, for me I would stay at world No. 1, or if I lose, maybe I would lose the ranking to one of the other guys. But not right now.

Q. Will you be needing to take painkillers for the injury? Will you be starting the tournament if you knew you couldn't play and win seven matches?
ANDY MURRAY: No, I'll be fine to play the event and play seven matches. I mean, providing things can happen obviously when you're playing. I mean, players have got injured during tournaments.

But as I am today, if I feel like I am today, I'd be delighted and have no issues getting through. You know, if necessary, I can take some antiinflammatories if my hip flares up. Hopefully that's not the case.

Q. Similar question, Andy. But if this was, say, a regular ATP event, do you think you'd be playing?
ANDY MURRAY: Well, as I feel today, yeah, I would be able to play. I would play, for sure. Maybe the way that we looked at it might have changed because I missed, you know, three days of practice. Maybe I wouldn't have traveled somewhere on the Saturday or the Friday, not knowing how I was going to be feeling over the weekend.

But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. As I feel today, for sure I would be playing, yeah.

Q. When did you and Kim find out? Will she be coming to Wimbledon this year?
ANDY MURRAY: She'll be coming to Wimbledon, yeah. And we found out a while ago. But not interested in discussing the dates of that in here.

Q. Your opponent tomorrow is a bit of a character. Off the court I'm wondering what you know about him, what you think for you will be the most important factor on the court tomorrow?
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, I haven't played against him, and I've not seen him play loads. I've heard a few things from some of the players. I chatted to him a little bit at Indian Wells earlier in the year. He's obviously a big personality. You know, he's not a quiet guy.

Yeah, from what I've heard, he's pretty entertaining on the court in terms of the way he plays, how he is. You know, quite unorthodox. He plays a lot of unexpected shots, a lot of dropshots, mixes his game up a lot, takes chances, tries some more sort of shots that guys may play in exhibitions, he tries when he's out there. That's what I've heard.

But I'm not sure. I'll try and watch a bit of video this evening with my team, see what we can get hold of, take it from there. But, yeah, be an interesting match.

Q. Apart from last year, do you have any favorite moments or memories from Wimbledon, especially as you were growing up?
ANDY MURRAY: Favorite memories? I mean, when I was growing up, obviously I followed Tim Henman a lot. I remember the match he played against Ivanisevic. Not necessarily a good memory, but it was obviously, I don't know, a match that a lot of people in Britain, British tennis remember very well.

I mean, I was actually on the tour at the time. But the match with Roger and Rafa in the final, the five-set final. I actually came to watch that as a fan. I watched that in the crowd with one of my close friends, as well.

Yeah, there's a couple.

Q. Would you say Ostapenko's success in Paris would rub off on the younger players in both draws here? As a young player yourself, did the success of your peers have an effect on you?
ANDY MURRAY: Not so much, really, no. Everyone obviously can see things differently. It wouldn't have had much impact on me. I think maybe more the way that she played rather than her winning the event was, you know, what was most impressive, like in that situation, that she just went for it. She took her chances. She didn't blink. She stuck to the way she played the whole event. That's what was most impressive for someone so young playing, you know, in the finals of a slam for the first time.

But I don't think that that result impacts, like, the next tournaments. I really don't.

Q. Has Ivan had any specific advice or maybe a change of approach to this tournament, just given the difficulty of the buildup you've had with the injury problems?
ANDY MURRAY: Not really. I think, you know, with something like that, a lot of it has to really come from the player because you know what you can and can't tolerate. We made the decision on Tuesday that, after I hit for a little bit in the morning, I needed to take a few days' break if I was going to give myself the best chance to be ready. There was no use pushing for, like, three or four days, making myself worse.

So we did that. We talked about it as a team. But a lot of it, you know, when it comes to an injury or pain that you're getting in your body, everyone feels different things. You know, everyone has different pain thresholds. You need to be the one that makes those decisions.

But once you tell the coaches, Right, I'm good to go, it's back over to them to get you doing the right things on the practice court.

Q. You have spoken before about how much time you think you've got left competing at the very top. Does that change your attitude, now you're not in the final stretch, but a limited amount of time you're going to appear here again? Does that change your attitude? Do you savor it more, these events?
ANDY MURRAY: You want to make the most of every tournament you play. I think you realize that a little bit more as you start to get older. I hope I'm still playing here for five, six, seven more years, if possible. But I don't know obviously what's going to happen.

I think just because of what Federer's doing just now, which is incredibly rare, a lot of people think everyone is going to start doing that now. I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

I want to make sure I make the most of all of these chances that I have left.

Q. That's what I was alluding to. A lot of people's favorite is a 35-year-old for the men's singles. Can you envision you being a favorite to win at 35?
ANDY MURRAY: I haven't given it that much thought. Also, I mean, whether someone's the favorite or not to me is not relevant. You know, who wins the tournament at the end is what's important, not who the favorite is on paper.

Q. From a practical point of view, you spend all year on the road. This is in some ways a local tournament to you, house in Surrey. Does that change anything in your routine around the games? Do you treat it like any other tournament? Does that actually add pressure because you can leave the bubble and go to a normal life at times?
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, there's pressure on this event because it's one of the most important we play during the whole year. So, you know, if I wasn't nervous or didn't feel any pressure, then I'd be very worried by that. I'm not sure I'd be wanting to keep playing if that was the case.

I want to be nervous. I want to feel the pressure at these events. But the nice thing about it is at the end of the days, like when I leave the courts, I can get away from it maybe a little bit more than at some of the other tournaments just because I'm at home with my family in my own house. That's nice.

Q. Just going back to Bublik. What is your recollection of Indian Wells? He interviewed you. According to him, he said he wanted to call you sir, and you were having none of it.
ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I think he interviewed a lot of the players there, and was asking what he thought were funny questions I think to, yeah, all of the players. That was his one to me.

But, yeah, we chatted a little bit away from the camera as well. He seemed like, like I said, pretty fun. He's a pretty confident guy, yeah. He was good fun in the limited time I spent with him.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

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