Finally Andy Murray has decided to step out from the daily discomfort caused by the nerve pain in his back since 18 months and have minor surgery.
However, his camp insisted on Thursday night that this is a regular procedure. Moreover, no sportsman likes to undergo a back operation until they have tried out all other options. Particularly, spinal nerves are not tampered with lightly and despite the treatment goes well, there is no guarantee that the issue will not recur. Although details are not available, it is well understood that Murray will be undergoing a microdiscectomy to release the stress on his sciatic nerve.
Of course, this is the same thing that footballer John Terry underwent in 2006 and made a recovery within 8 weeks.
In case of Murray, that kind of time frame would place him back on the court in November, although apparently it is unlikely that he would be ready to play in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, which commences at the O2 Arena on 4th Nov.
The tournament director of the ATP Tour Finals Chris Kermode disclosed that he remained hopeful on Thursday night, but a more realistic target is the annual winter training block in Miami. In fact, this is Murray’s second home and last year he and coach Ivan Lendl placed in a phenomenal workload in December as they got ready for another encounter at tennis’s biggest prizes.
However, the effort paid off in spades at Wimbledon and yet there is no doubt that Murray’s body is beginning to struggle with his workload. He declared to the media in March that he feels like he is getting to a stage where if one does too much one starts getting injured. When he is training, he ended up picking up a lot of complaints.
Murray has suffered his most terrible symptoms during the European clay-court season. As the ball bounces higher and slower on clay, he has to twist his body much more to put pace on his shots. In addition, the slippery footing reduces his core stability.
He has played three matches in as many days again in Umag last week on clay as he committed all his energy to reclaim Great Britain’s place in the world group of the Davis Cup. Moreover, the impact on his body just reminded him how much of a liability his back has become.
Specifically, his commitment to the British cause has cost him significant sums, not just in case of prize money but appearance fees too. Additionally, his ranking is certainly to drop one spot to No 4, as David Ferrer is moving above him.
Keeping in mind about Murray’s physical and mental weariness, this may be a sensible time to deal what had become an intractable problem, giving him an opportunity of coming back strongly at January’s Australian Open.
Eventually, for a role model, Murray can look at Rafael Nadal, who is currently relishing the benefits of last year’s extended lay-off to rest his irritable knees. Unluckily, Murray’s back trouble has led him to miss the French Open this year. Then he took a couple of weeks off full training in the lead-up to the grass-court season. But rest tended to be ineffective when it came to destroyed discs.
