Andy Murray’s win over Stan Wawrinka at the Nature Valley International was his first for 350 days after a hip problem kept him on the sidelines for almost a year.
In the battle of the three-time Grand Slam champions, the Brit beat the Swiss 6-1 6-3. It was an impressive win, but Murray was not as excited about it as he anticipated.
“I expected to be happier,” he said. “It was obviously good to get the win against someone as good as Stan.”
“I guess that’s one of the problems with being a professional athlete who has competed at the top of the game: you have expectations.”
Murray continued: “I always thought when I came back I would be more pumped for every single win. But the reality was it’s the first round of an event and while it was great to get through it, I obviously want to do more than that.”
Murray not ready to decide about Wimbledon yet
The Brit is still unsure whether he will compete at Wimbledon. “My health and my body are No. 1 priority right now, and I will make that decision when I’m ready,” he said.
“If I get far in the competition here and have an extremely long match on Friday and decide, ‘okay, I think I’m good to play Wimbledon’, I could potentially not feel good the next day. That’s also a possibility, so I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
Murray discusses Edmund’s rise
Murray faces fellow Brit Kyle Edmund in the second round at Eastbourne. And he insists he is not bothered about whether people think he is likely to win the match.
“I don’t care so much about those sort of tags, like who the favorite is going into the match,” he said. “But certainly a lot has changed since the last time we played in terms of the experience that he has and the results he’s had and how well he’s been playing.”
“So I’m sure he’ll go into the match feeling very confident. For me it’s another step in my recovery and a really good test.”
Murray continued, “In the space of ten days, I will have played three excellent players. Obviously Stan’s had his injury problems but he’s still a top player.”
“So for me to get another match against someone as good as Kyle is a really positive thing for me. Hopefully obviously I’m going to go out and perform well and win the match, but it will be tricky.”
The Brit is also unconcerned that Edmund is now the British number one. He said, “The British No. 1 tag was never of any importance to me at all.”
“It’s a global sport. I wanted to be the best in the world or competing with the best players in the world, not competing against who the best player in Britain was. For some players maybe it’s very important. I don’t know.”
“Looking at Kyle, I think being 18 in the world is an incredible achievement and is a greater achievement than being the best in the UK, and he’s going to go higher than that. I’d imagine he’s improving a lot all the time. So that’s not something that’s ever really concerned me.”
