THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

June 25, 2022

Andy Murray

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Andy, how does it feel to be back at Wimbledon?

ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah, obviously as well after the last few years with didn't happen a couple years ago, then last year obviously kind of different circumstances, staying in the bubble and everything. I don't think it was full capacity last year either.

So, yeah, nice to be back playing Wimbledon as normal.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. You said on Monday that you still weren't able to hit a couple of shots and you still weren't quite sure about your participation in the tournament. How have things gone since then? How are you feeling?

ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, it's gone well. Yeah, I've been able to gradually progress my training this week and got to play a few sets, a lot of points.

Yeah, last few days have been good.

Q. I saw you hit with Dan yesterday on 1. It looked like you were enjoying it, hitting the ball well. Seeing Ivan there, him coming back with you, how much does that reinforce your conviction that there's still good tennis left in you, conceivably even this fortnight?

ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, I think I showed a couple weeks ago that there was still good tennis left in me. I mean, I beat a guy in the top five in the world, you know, was neck-and-neck with Berrettini, who is one of the best grass court players in the world before the injury. I played well against Kyrgios, as well. The first set was a good level. And I've been doing pretty well in practices. Yeah, I know the tennis is in there; I just need to bring it out during the event now.

Yeah, obviously having Ivan on my team helps. We've had a lot of success in the past. We know each other well. He still believes in me. There's not loads of coaches, you know, people out there that have done over this last period, and he has. That definitely helps me.

Q. I understand you're staying quite close to Wimbledon this time. You have a rented apartment. What was the decision behind that? Who is doing the cooking?

ANDY MURRAY: So I don't know if I'm going to stay there. I have rented an apartment, which my dad is staying in, but there's an extra room. I mean, it's very close to the tournament or the venue. Yeah, I may stay there if I have a late finish or an early match.

We moved houses sort of around Wimbledon time last year. Obviously last year was different because we stayed in the bubble. But I'm a little bit further away now.

With what's been going on with the trains and stuff, traffic has been tricky. I don't want to be in a situation where I'm spending an hour and a half to get here in the car, an hour, hour and a half on the way home. It's just to potentially limit the amount of travel and be a little bit closer.

Q. Does your dad cook?

ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, he's a pretty good cook. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'll probably eat most of my meals here or use one of the apps.

Q. I wanted to pick up on Ivan being here with you. You've mentioned in the past in relation to the hip injury that perhaps there were periods in your career where you felt in retrospect you'd overtrained. No blame placed on Ivan, but maybe that coincided with periods you were working with him. Is that something you two have discussed this time around, looking back?

ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, we spoke not necessarily about any of the training that I did in the past, but more the future. The place in my career that I am just now, he obviously played into his 30s as well. As he got older, reduced the amount of training and stuff he was doing himself. So we spoke about that a little bit, the amount I would be doing moving forwards.

We obviously did quite a long training block in Orlando after Miami. We spent like four or five weeks there, spent a lot of time on court with him. But, yeah, it was obviously less than what we did in the past, which is just common sense.

Communicate through my team, as well, the work that I'm doing off the court to supplement the on-court work, maybe being just a little bit more, I don't know, collaborative on that side of things.

Maybe sometimes in the past I would do my tennis work, then the fitness team would do their fitness work, whereas now there's maybe a little bit more planning and strategy around that, which maybe when you're younger I probably should have done it more, but I didn't have so many issues.

Yeah, things have changed a bit.

Q. What do you make of the challenge facing James? You've played him a couple times before. He's had his own hip problems. I wonder if you ever discussed that with him?

ANDY MURRAY: I haven't discussed the hip issues. I know he had an operation after the Australian Open this year. I don't know exactly what the issues were with his hip or what surgery and stuff he had done.

But, yeah, obviously it takes a bit of time coming back, depending on the severity of the operation, et cetera. I think he was back playing after about three and a half, four months maybe, which if it is what I think it probably is, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, look, he's a guy that's had quite a few operations. He's had quite a few injury issues over the years. He's proper, like, hard worker. He got up to, I think his career-high ranking last year, he finished last year extremely well, the second half of the year, then obviously had the surgery.

Obviously wish him well coming back from the surgery. I'm sure we'll have a good match on Monday.

Q. What are your thoughts about the tournament's decision on the Russian and Belarusian players and the tour's response with the ranking points move?

ANDY MURRAY: I mean, I have spoken about this quite a few times. I understand why the decision was taken. I also know quite a few of, on the men's side, Russian players, and Belarusian players pretty well. Friendly with them. I get on well with them.

Yeah, I feel bad for them, as well. I can also understand the frustration on their side.

In terms of the response from the ATP, I didn't really agree with it. I just don't see who it helps. All the players have still showed up to play here, so... I don't see how it puts the ATP in a stronger position moving forwards.

But that's just my opinion.

Q. You mentioned Ivan is one of the kind of few people that have always believed in you, I guess coaches. Have you ever taken it personally or been personally hurt by people who haven't, like, believed in you?

ANDY MURRAY: No, no, not really. It hasn't hurt me. In many ways it's been, like, a motivation. I've also spoken to a number of coaches. From memory up until this period, I think there was maybe like one or two times when I'd spoken to coaches about potentially working with me. It hadn't worked out.

But for the most part, like, when I had had conversations with coaches, the potential of working with someone, it had come off most of the time and worked out, whereas this time round, yeah, got turned down by a lot of coaches (smiling).

So, yeah, that obviously was difficult to deal with because, I don't know, there's obviously good coaches out there. I don't know how many that are, like, top-level coaches that maybe you'd really want to work with if you're trying to win the major events.

So, yeah, that was difficult. That's also why I'm grateful that Ivan has come back to work with me and help me try and achieve what it is I want to achieve.

Q. I wanted to ask you about the scrutiny a British player faces here, how it's evolved over the years. Have you given any advice to Emma Raducanu about that challenge of facing that scrutiny?

ANDY MURRAY: I mean, I haven't given advice to Emma or any of the British players on how to deal with that side of things. No one has asked me to. I'd be more than happy to, but I'm also not going to call up one of the players and just say, Hey, this is how you should deal with it because that's the right way to go.

Everyone is different. Everyone feels things in a different way, will handle it differently. I certainly didn't handle things perfectly during the Wimbledon period, but I can also understand probably the different emotions and stresses that you can feel coming into this tournament. It is great and it is amazing, but there is challenges that come with it. Yeah, it's difficult.

I don't know how much it has changed over the years. I mean, maybe for me right at the beginning of your career, there's not really much expected of you, then quite quickly, the better you do, the higher your ranking is, then a lot is expected of you. There is a lot of pressure.

Then maybe like this year and last year, for me anyway, there's been very little from the outside. Obviously still put pressure on myself to perform well and do well. That's how it's been for me throughout my career.

But certainly in the middle part of it, it was pretty intense.

Q. We've seen in recent weeks with golf the influence of Saudi Arabia, their growing influence in sport. Is it something that's ever discussed by the tennis players, what might happen should they try to get involved in tennis? What would your reaction be if you were offered a sack full of money to play on a different tour?

ANDY MURRAY: They did. They put on an event in Saudi Arabia a few years ago, and I was offered to play there. I know a number of the other guys on the tour were offered to play there. I don't think the player field that went was what they were hoping. Yeah, a lot of the, I would say, top players and bigger names turned it down. And I personally wouldn't go and play there.

Q. If you want to answer this question, you were one of the players in advance of installing the biological blood test in 2013, around this year. Since then a lot has happened, a lot of blood testing has happened. Some in advance notice, some without notice. What I find the problem is that from the ITF statistics only two blood tests in competition in the full year, 2021, were taken. I want to know your opinion in this physical sport if you would like more blood tests during slams or tournaments besides from the biological blood test?

ANDY MURRAY: Yeah, I mean, I think the more testing that's done, the better. And obviously the more I assume random nature of it, the more beneficial it would be.

I know when I was playing at the top of the game in terms of my ranking, I felt like I got tested a lot. I think that last year, the early part of last year, and 2020, there was quite a reduction in the amount of testing that was taking place I think in part because of COVID partly, but certainly I think like the second part of last year and this year, that's not really been the case.

But, yeah, I definitely think the more random nature of testing is beneficial. I think if players are given advanced warning, that's probably not going to work.

So, yeah, I'd be supportive of, yeah, more random testing. The more testing, the better.