Ivan Lendl 'not at all' worried by Andy Murray's troubled grass court preparation ahead of Wimbledon
In fact, Lendl says he is 'pleased' with Murray's preparations ahead of Wimbledon
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Your support makes all the difference.Ivan Lendl insists he is “not at all” worried by the hip injury which has troubled Andy Murray this week and says he is “very pleased” with the Scot’s preparations for the defence of his title at Wimbledon next week.
Murray has not been on court since he practised with Grigor Dimitrov on Tuesday and has pulled out of his scheduled exhibition match at Hurlingham on Friday because of his hip problem.
However, Lendl insisted: “We’ll see what the weather is like [tomorrow]. If the weather is good I am sure we will practise.”
Although Murray’s Wimbledon build-up has not gone as he planned – he lost to the Australian Jordan Thompson in his first match at the Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club last week and has pulled out of both his planned exhibition matches this week – Lendl said he was happy with where the Scot is at in terms of his preparations.
“I’m very pleased with the two weeks we’ve had,” he said. “He was hitting two days ago with Dimitrov and hitting the ball great."
Lendl, who was speaking at a function to promote Superga footwear, added: “We had great weather. It’s more complicated when you have bad weather. I thought last year was more difficult because in two weeks we didn’t finish one practice on our own terms.
“We were always chased off by the rain. We had two weeks of uninterrupted sunshine, and even though he didn't play well at Queen's, we had great practices.”
Murray went into the recent French Open out of form and under the weather, but Lendl said the world No 1’s current situation was very different. “Unlike Paris he is hitting the ball really well,” Lendl said. “Practice has gone well.”
Lendl thought Murray’s main problem going into Roland Garros had been the fact that he had not played enough matches. An elbow injury had forced the Scot to miss the Miami Masters and he made early exits at Indian Wells, Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome.
“My feeling was, looking at him, that he was not picking the right shot because he hadn’t played enough and that he didn’t have the safety of saying: ‘OK, I can hit this shot 15 times in a row if I have to.’ That all comes from competition. That was a very simple look from my end saying: ‘Hey, let’s just do repetitions and see where it takes us’.”
From an unpromising start at the French Open Murray went on to reach the semi-finals before losing to Stan Wawrinka.
“He was a couple of points away from the final actually,” Lendl said. “I find it ironic in that match that he was two sets to one up with Stan being a better player in all three sets and then Andy was the better player in the fourth set and Stan won it. Where I was sitting, that's what I felt.”
Lendl said he had not been surprised by Thompson’s victory over Murray because “they are all great players on the tour”. He noted that Wawrinka and Milos Raonic, seeded No 2 and No 3 respectively at Queen’s, had also lost first time out on the same day as Murray.
“As you saw, the first match on grass is always tricky,” Lendl said. “All the guys who beat Stan, Milos and Andy had played qualifying or the previous week at a tournament.”
He added: “It was not that surprising. What was surprising was that it happened to three guys one after the other on the court. It's not that surprising to see those guys lose to a guy who had already been on grass for two weeks or played two or three matches. I don't care how good you are. We have seen that movie over and over.”
Lendl said the reason why players had been seeking exhibition matches this week was simply because they needed more time on grass. “That's [also] why Novak [Djokovic] is in Eastbourne," Lendl said. "He is not in Eastbourne because he likes Eastbourne, nothing against Eastbourne. He is there because he is looking for matches on grass.”
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