Andy Murray has described his first round defeat at the Monte Carlo Masters as one of the worst performances of his career before hinting that he may have to re-evaluate his plans for the coming weeks.
The three-time Grand Slam champion was far from his best during his 6-1, 6-3, loss to Alex de Minaur on Monday in just under 90 minutes. Murray, who is a three-time semi-finalist in Monte Carlo, produced a costly 26 unforced errors against just nine winners. On top of that, the Brit managed to win only 38% of his second service points and saved two out of the six break points he faced.
It is a disappointing outcome for the former world No.1 who has been training hard on the clay since his defeat to Dusan Lajovic in the first round of Miami last month. He recently had what he described as a ‘training week/holiday’ in Marbella with his family.
“It was awful,” Murray said of his performance against de Minaur during an interview with The Herald. “Nothing was good about it. I don’t know exactly why that was. Obviously I didn’t play a great match in Miami. And this was worse than that.
“I didn’t do anything well, didn’t serve well, return well, forehands, backhands, shot selection. It was one of the worst I’ve played in my career, probably.
“I had a match like that last year in Doha against (Roberto) Bautista (Agut) that was pretty bad and maybe one or two others in my career, but in terms of how I felt on the court, it was right up there, just across the board.”
Murray’s win-loss for the year so far now stands at 8-6 with his best result being runner-up to Daniil Medvedev in Doha. He also reached the third round of both the Australian Open and Indian Wells.
However, his defeat to de Miaur has left Murray pondering about what to do next with the option of skipping the rest of the clay swing of the cards. Should he do so it would not be the first time. He only played one event on the surface last year (Madrid) and didn’t play any at all in 2022.
“I was feeling optimistic coming into the clay,” he said. “I’d been feeling good with my body the last 10 days or so considering I’ve not played much on it.
“I was feeling good and I’d actually been moving pretty well in practice, so I was optimistic. But it was pretty demoralising and I’ve not felt like that many times in my career on the court. It was really tough.”
Monte Carlo is the only Masters 1000 event where Murray is yet to reach the final in his career.
