Former world number one and Great Britain’s Andy Murray will participate in his last two tournaments of the season in China before taking a break in 2018.
Murray, who has had a hip surgery and is on his way to making full recovery, will participate in the China Open and Shenzhen Open before ending his year. Having fallen to outside the top 800 earlier this year as he struggled to return to competitive tennis, Murray first featured in the Queen’s competition earlier this year.
Since losing in the first round of that tournament to Nick Kyrgios, Murray has been beaten in the second round at the Nottingham Open and US Open earlier in August and was knocked out in round one at the Cincinnati Masters by Lucas Pouille.
Murray’s best performance came at the Washington Open where he won three matches in a row before suffering from fatigue and giving his quarter-final opponent Alex de Minaur a walkover. As a result, Murray’s just outside the top 300 in the ATP rankings at the moment.
What this decision means is that Murray won’t be a part of the remaining two Masters events that will be played in Shanghai and Paris.
Speaking on a Facebook video, Murray said:
“I need a long period of training and reconditioning to get myself in the best shape possible for the beginning of the 2019 season and getting myself back competing for the biggest tournaments again. Looking forward to getting some hard training done and making some more improvements.”
Murray admitted the previous months had been a positive for him despite those early defeats. He attributed that to the feeling of having made a leap in his rehab.
Having won three Grand Slam titles in his career, Murray and Stan Wawrinka are the only current players outside Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic to have multiple Grand Slam wins.
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