Both men may be looking at ways of capitalising on their success for the good of the sport but Andy Murray yesterday suggested that the lesson to be learned from last month’s rolling back of the years by Roger Federer is that less may mean more in competitive terms.
While obviously personally disappointed at his early Australian Open exit, Murray acknowledged that the extraordinary repeat of Wimbledon 2008 when the Williams sisters met in the women’s final before Federer beat Rafael Nadal in the final, had been great for tennis.
“With Venus and Serena in the women’s final as well, it was a perfect tournament for the organisers, they had some of the most two or three of the most popular players of all time competing at an age where people almost want to get behind them even more,” he observed.
“They have been written off quite a lot over the last couple of years so I think for fans to see them coming back and competing in the major events was big as well.
“Because of the injuries no-one knew how many more times Roger might play in Australia, or how many more times he would be competing in the latter stages of slams. I think it is going to make for an exciting year and hopefully they can both stay away from injuries.”
However it seemed evident that whereas Murray and Novak Djokovic had flayed themselves in battling for the prized end of year world number one ranking, Federer and Nadal had been much fresher following lengthy injury enforced lay-offs.
“It’s incredible what Roger did in Australia after such a long break, but we play so much tennis a lot of the year actually coming to an event fresh can have a huge advantage,” Murray observed.
“He and Rafa were both coming back from pretty significant time out and they both played extremely well, so maybe that’s something we can all learn from moving forward.”
While players are signed up to playing in the majority of ATP run events Murray consequently indicated that he is factoring those respective performances into his future planning, hinting that it may result in cutting down.
“There’s definitely things I would have done a bit differently,” Murray admitted.
“It’s difficult sometimes with the way the schedule is to get things right all of the time. I was kind of in a position I’d never experienced before, played that much tennis and sort of been that fatigued at the end of the year to know exactly what to do.
“Whether Doha’s the best preparation or not, I don’t know. Novak played it the year before and won the event so and went on to win the Australian Open and has played it a number of years and it’s not affected him there.”
Now in his 30th year he has drawn inspiration from how Federer has looked after himself in seeking to extend his own career, but he also knows he largely had good reason to be satisfied with the choices he made last year so need not make urgent changes just yet.
“Maybe that’s something I could look at for next year and, yeah it’s obviously a disappointing one to lose but there hasn’t been loads of those sort of results in my career at the major events,” he noted.
“I think a lot of the guys at the top of the game have had them over the years. You know, Roger lost to (Andreas) Seppi a few years ago, Rafa lost to (Fernando) Verdasco in the first round the year before, Novak and (Denis) Istomin – it does happen. It’s still disappointing but I shouldn’t let it affect me too much.”
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