ANDY Murray’s coach Jamie Delgado has revealed that physical testing and analytics will play a major part in determining whether the former World No 1 will be able to return to the singles court in time for the US Open, writes Stewart Fisher. As bullish as the Scot is about his comeback from January’s hip resurfacing, a full return in singles is a different story and the Scot typically will subject himself to a rigorous series of tests before deciding if the data backs up his gut feeling about a full return for the US hard court swing.
Failing that, a gentler option may be a hard-court event at Scotstoun in Glasgow in mid-September which has been named the Murray trophy in his honour. “There is no date on it,” said Delgado. “It is a very much ‘see how we go’ and there are certain physical targets he will have to get before he can play singles and that is out of my hands. It’s out of my area, but he will have to have certain strength levels and certain speed levels that enable him to compete in singles.”
“It will be a team decision as well. The medical side is part of it, he will have some say in it himself, how he is feeling physically, regardless of results. It is an injury which is a bit untested in some ways, people don’t know exactly what you need to do, so a lot of it will be on how it feels.”
While Murray’s ranking has dropped to World No 227, he will be able to combine wild cards and a number of his remaining protected ranking spots to enter tournaments. “It is not down to rankings, it is just when he feels good and strong enough that he can compete in a singles match,” said Delgado. “Something like the US Open, best of five sets, is a big difference to what three sets is, we will just try and time it so it is done at the right time, but I honestly don’t know when that will be.”
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