Andy Murray playing singles in Cincinnati after hip injury and surgery

Andy Murray is back!

The former world no.1 has been dealing for long with a severe hip injury. Eventually, things got dramatically south for him in Australia earlier this year when it seemed as Andy’s career was over. This is what happened.

Andy Murray (sort of) announced his retirement

Andy had a rather emotional press conference in Australia in January when he announced his doubts about the opportunity to keep on playing tennis at pro-level since all his efforts to fix his hip injury were useless.

Eventually, everyone looked a bit too eager to “celebrate” his retirement, but the more things started to cool off, the more it seemed possible for Andy to come back after a plausible operation.

The hip surgery

Andy took comfort from the successful comeback of Bob Bryan that had a similar operation, and the Brit decided to go under the knife. Even if Andy was cautious about the outcome of the surgery, it seemed that things were going to the right directions especially after Andy started his rehabilitation to move to the next step.

Andy Murray had a hip operation

Playing doubles

Andy didn’t want to play singles straight away as he needed to recover his confidence with his movements. Therefore, the 3-time slam champion decided to compete in doubles. Andy played his first tournament in partnership with Feliciano Lopez at the prestigious Queen’s Club where they won the event. Later the Brit also played in Eastbourne (with Marcelo Melo), in Wimbledon (with Pierre Hughues Herber and Serena Williams in the mixed doubles), in Washington (with his brother Jamie), and finally in Montreal (with Feliciano Lopez).

Why playing singles in Cincinnati

Even if Andy didn’t win any tournament after the Queens, he was delighted to note that he was completely pain-free. Therefore, Murray decided to accept a wildcard to play in singles at the upcoming ATP1000.

Will Murray play the US Open?

It is still unclear if Andy will compete in the last slam of the year. In fact, playing a best-of-5 competition on hard courts is probably not the best option after his hip surgery, at least for now. However, Andy made it clear that if he had a vague idea of playing at the Flushing Meadows, he had to compete before in another event with a lighter best-of-3 format. Cincinnati looked to be a great option; then time will tell if Andy will take his chances at the US Open.