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Andy Murray’s decision to go under the knife in a Melbourne hospital on Monday morning – defying a swathe of expert and amateur opinion – looks like it has mended not only his right hip but revitalised the stubborn streak that has made the Scot such a remarkable player. It would seem he is not done yet, not by a long way.
There should be no doubt, though: Murray may have put his faith in one of the world’s best hip surgeons (a friend he has known for nine years, it emerged) but this was a calculated gamble. Plenty of players have tried hip surgery and discovered their playing days were pretty much done.
There are no guarantees but Dr John O’Donnell looks to have delivered Murray the result he will treasure alongside winning any of his three grand slams, two Olympic gold medals and reaching the pinnacle of his sport, when he ground his peers into submission in an astonishing run of 24 unbeaten matches in 2016 to unseat Novak Djokovic as the world No1. Murray paid the price for that surge of manic passion when his body collapsed six months ago.
Andy Murray has undergone hip surgery in Australia and is hoping to be back in action for the grass court season. Photograph: Andy Murray/instagram
Since then he has endured not only the misery of tedious rehab – his preferred option – but other false dawns and setbacks, first at the US Open, when he withdrew two days before the tournament, minor groin surgery on 18 December and further drama last week in Brisbane when he cancelled his scheduled comeback.
Now, though, he can smile a little. Dr O’Donnell was, Murray says, “very happy about how it went”. While “it” remains a vague entity, Murray, mercurial as ever, described the problem and the cure in the most general terms. What we do know is there was immense and constant pain.
For the first time he elaborated on the suffering on the day he lost to Sam Querrey in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon but the causes he chose to keep to himself.
“At Wimbledon, everything was hurting. I had never been in pain like that before. The thing that was stopping me from playing – and the reason I decided to have the surgery – was I was struggling to do extensions. Any time I had to sprint, with my right leg behind me, or like when I was walking, I was in pain. I could move about 80% [efficiently] but that last 10, 15 or 20%, when I would have to sprint or move extremely fast or very explosively, I wasn’t able to do it. It wasn’t that my leg couldn’t get into those positions. I was stopping myself extending my leg because of the pain.”
Murray worried about surgery; he had come through a back operation in late 2013 and was not keen to go through the process again but he put his total trust in O’Donnell at St Vincent’s hospital.
“It depends on what they see when they go in there,” Murray said of the risk factor. “When you look at my hip on an MRI scan just now, it doesn’t look very good. Most tennis players’ hips, if you scanned them, wouldn’t look particularly good. If he said: ‘Right, I’m going to literally do everything to have your hip look clear on an MRI scan’, the potential is that the time out [would be] long – and also there is a good chance you don’t recover to a level to play tennis.
“When we discussed it with him, it was, look, let’s try to do as little as possible with the highest chance of success but with the knowledge that, when he goes there if there’s things he sees that need to be done, he repairs and sorts them. That is what he did.”
Murray described the fraught final moments in a Brisbane hotel, where he sat alone for 10 hours, mulling over his future. “The decision was made on Wednesday, late afternoon or evening. But, on the Tuesday night when I withdrew from the tournament, I had pretty much made my mind up. I met with John on the Wednesday. He’s one of the best in the world and he’s known me since I was 20, 21 years old, I’ve seen him lots of times over the years and felt like he was the right person to do it.
A little post op photo. I'm feeling really positive and looking forward to starting rehab. Thanks to everyone for the well wishes and support the last few days.. It really helps. And everyone try and find a partner who looks at you the way @jamie__delgado looks at me
