Murray loses on comeback

Cincinnati, August 13

Three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray said he “did OK” in his first singles match in seven months, a 6-4 6-4 loss to Richard Gasquet at the Cincinnati Masters here.

“I don’t really know what I was expecting, to be honest,” said Murray on Monday, sidelined since January by a career-threatening hip injury. “I did OK. There were a lot of things I would like to have done better in the match, but you also have to be somewhat realistic in terms of what you can expect, in terms of how you actually play and hit the ball,” he added.

Murray said he “felt fine, physically,” during the match. “My legs were a little bit heavy at the end of the match,” he said. “When Richard threw drop-shots at me, there were a few times I didn’t even run to the ball, didn’t react to it. That’s nothing to do with my hip, that’s just me not running for a ball.” Murray hadn’t played a singles match since a five-set first-round exit at the Australian Open, where he tearfully acknowledged he feared his career was over.

Since undergoing right hip resurfacing surgery on January 28 he has slowly fashioned a return. Murray has been playing doubles for the past two months, winning at Queen’s Club in London with Feliciano Lopez.

Gasquet, however, was too strong for the 32-year-old, who won the title in the US Open warm-up in Cincinnati in 2008 and 2011. The Frenchman, who had undergone a groin surgery in January, ended a five-match skid against the Briton, now ranked 324th.

Murray opened the game with a double fault, and his forehand into the net gave Gasquet a match point that the 56th-ranked converted when Murray sent a service return wide to end the match after 96 minutes.

Tentative at times, he finished with a respectable 20 winners but struck 28 unforced errors.

No US Open singles

He was optimistic he can improve further.

“I think with a few more weeks of practice and hopefully some more matches, then I could do better,” said Murray, who nevertheless said after the match that he did not intend to play singles at the US Open.

“I’m not going to play the US Open singles,” he confirmed, adding that the US Open organisers had wanted to know by Monday if he was interested in a wild card invitation.

“I felt like I wanted to maybe try and get a couple of matches in before making a decision like that,” added Murray, who knows the best-of-five set format at the Grand Slams will be even more of a challenge. — AFP

Key Results

Men: Nick Kyrgios bt Lorenzo Sonego 7-6 6-4; Radu Albot bt Marin Cilic 6-4 7-6(6); Miomir Kecmanovic bt Felix Auger Aliassime 6-3 6-3; Sam Querrey bt Pierre-Hughues Herbert 7-6(2) 7-6(1); Yodhihito Nishioka bt Jordan Thompson 7-5 5-7 6-4s

Women: Dayana Yastremska bt Caroline Wozniacki 6-4 6-4; Rebecca Peterson bt Johanna Konta 6-3 3-6 7-5; Svetlana Kuznetsova bt Anastasija Sevastova 7-6(3) 6-7(4) 6-4; Venus Williams bt Lauren Davis 7-5 6-2; Yulia Putintseva bt Jelena Ostapenko 6-2 7-6(3) 6-3; Aliaksandra Sasnovich bt Astra Sharma 6-1 4-6 6-1