Just a few minutes after his devastating five-set second-round defeat by Stefanos Tsitsipas at Wimbledon this year, Andy Murray was inconsolable as he arrived before the press. Murray had spent the prior months working tirelessly with the belief he had positioned himself for a positive run on home soil. Instead, despite leading by two sets to one overnight, he could not close it out. Asked if he would be back at Wimbledon next year, Murray said he did not know.
But tennis never stops. One of the fundamental requirements of being a professional tennis player is learning how to swiftly move on from victories and defeats, focusing on the present and looking back only in service of improvement.
After wallowing in his defeat for some days, Murray reappeared as a spectator for the Wimbledon final as Carlos Alcaraz defeated Novak Djokovic. He instinctively found himself at work again, taking videos of both players while thinking about how he could apply their decision-making to his own game. Around the same period, he converged with his team and they worked through frank conversations about his approach to his game.
"I wasn't that happy with how I played in the [Tsitsipas] match, to be honest," Murray says. "I made some changes to my game after the match, had a couple of long, long chats with my team about how I wanted to improve the shots that I wanted to improve and, if I'm going to win those matches and compete at the highest level, how it is I need to go about doing that."
Both the match, an excellent spectacle against the current world No 4, and Murray's reaction to the defeat only further underlines the fascinating position he occupies at this point in his career. Murray is now ranked No 36 in the world, his highest ranking since his hip resurfacing surgery in 2019, and he is undoubtedly playing his best tennis since his hip issues threatened his career.
Esta historia es de la edición August 15, 2023 de The Guardian.
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