Andy Murray has withdrawn the 2022 Atlanta Open from his US Open preparation tour in hopes of avoiding the fate he suffered at Wimbledon.
It’s been an up-and-down season for Murray so far, as he has played a lot of tennis trying to find his best form. The general truth in tennis has always been that the more a player plays, the better they are likely to perform.
While that doesn’t seem like a bad idea for a 25-year-old athlete, at this stage of Murray’s career, it’s not the best tactic. He played a lot of tennis this year, hitting 21 matches by the time the grass season came around.
Then, he played nine matches in 14 days and suffered an abdominal injury, which completely derailed his preparation for Wimbledon. That event was his main goal for the season, so being sidelined leading up to it destroyed any hope of performing well.
He won one match but lost in the second, leaving him devastated. To avoid making the same mistake, the Brit has now dropped the Atlanta Open from his pre-US Open schedule.
He was initially set to play in both Washington and Atlanta, but he has now dropped the latter, hoping to avoid overplaying before the US Open. After all, there are two ATP Masters 1000 events as well, and by the time the US Open comes around, he might have played too many matches.
Playing too much is, unfortunately, something quite familiar for Murray, as he pushed himself hard a few years ago while trying to finish the year as World No. 1.
That push in 2016 saw him play 90 matches, which likely contributed to his hip injury. The problems started the year after, and the rest is history. Now, many years later, he’s trying to avoid making the same mistakes a second time this season.