Andy Murray's road to recovery and childhood anxiety: Dunblane
Tennis NewsTuesday, 26 November 2019 at 16:00
In an upcoming documentary ['Resurfacing'- trailer below], released on Friday 29 November on Amazon prime, Andy Murray talks about his recovery from serious hip injury. It also offers a glimpse of Murray's darkest hours as a nine year old child - the massacre at Dunblane primary school where a teacher and sixteen children lost their lives.
Andy Murray has said tennis helped him deal with ‘anxiety’ as a child following the aftermath of the deadliest school shooting in British history. Murray and his brother were at the school at the same time the incident happened. He has rarely spoken about the dramatic incident.
"You asked me a while ago why tennis was important to me,” he said. “Obviously I had the thing that happened at Dunblane. When I was around nine. I am sure for all the kids there it would be difficult for different reasons."
“The fact we knew the guy, we went to his kids club, he had been in our car, we had driven and dropped him off at train stations and things."
"Within 12 months of that happening, our parents got divorced. It was a difficult time that for kids. To see that and not quite understand what is going on.”
Tennis worked therapeutically and helped to get over the anxiety as a child. “And then six to 12 months after that, my brother also moved away from home. He went away to train to play tennis. We obviously used to do everything together. When he moved away that was also quite hard for me.” Murray reflected.
“Around that time and after that, for a year or so, I had lots of anxiety but that came out when I was playing tennis. When I was competing I would get really bad breathing problems. My feeling towards tennis is that it’s an escape for me in some ways.
“Because all of these things are stuff that I have bottled up. I don’t know because we don’t talk about these things. They are not things that are discussed."
“The way that I am, on the tennis court, I show some positive things about my personality and I also show the bad things and things I really hate. Tennis allows me to be that child, that has all of these questions and that’s why tennis is important to me.”
The hip operations - the road to fitness
The Amazon documentary focuses mainly on the recovery process from the two hip operations. During the Australian Open in 2019, he stated he might be forced to retire from professional tennis. Murray had to undergo a second hip operation, where a metal rod was placed into the joint.
It looked like Andy Murray was slowly getting better during the summer of '19, yet in his mind retirement was still an option. Not his tennis' self until september in China, the first time he realised his time with the game might not be over.
“Asia was basically where I started to realise I can do this because at the beginning of that trip, literally two or three days before the first tournament in Asia, I was having conversations with my team.” He told reporters.
“I was practising and I was like ‘no, I am giving this until the end of the year and if I’m not winning matches and feeling better than I am now, I don’t want to keep going.’
“I was putting a lot of effort in but my movement wasn’t at the right level, but as I started to play quite a few matches it changed quite quickly and I thought I was a lot further away than I was and that was what a lot of guys in the team were saying to me."
Going on: “They were saying ‘you are much closer than you think’ and I won a few matches, started to feel better and maybe as well I gained more confidence in my hip. I stopped thinking about it in matches which was quite a big step.”
The Brit's comeback climaxed in Antwerp at the European Open, where he beat 4th seed Stan Wawrinka in the final. More probably, this was an even greater victory for his mindset. He now says he is ahead of where he expected to be in regards to his hip.
“It depends how long the hip lasts basically. I could have other injuries on top of that as well. If I am healthy, I’d love to play for as long as I can.” He concluded.
https://youtu.be/_e2jjv4Tl6U
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