Andrea Petkovic shared her thoughts on Andy Murray's potential retirement from tennis, stating that she was "sad" to hear the news.
Murray will turn 37 in a few months and recently suggested that it is very likely he may not play past this summer. The three-time Grand Slam champion was speaking to reporters in the aftermath of his straight-sets defeat to Ugo Humbert in Dubai.
The former World No. 1 was growing increasingly frustrated by the number of questions he had to field about the topic across every press conference and admitted he was "bored" about it. His mother, Judy Murray, took to X (formerly Twitter) to slam journalists for their nagging behavior.
Petkovic, who retired from professional tennis because of chronic injuries, appeared on the Inside-In podcast and made her feelings about Murray's impending retirement clear.
The German knows that there is no workaround on the age factor as it eventually catches up on everyone, including the best, and is emphatic of the struggles Murray has had to endure with injuries and playing in the best era of men's tennis.
"So it made me really sad (the news of his upcoming retirement). I'm a big Andy Murray fan. I think he could have achieved much more if you didn't have three metal hips and the three of the greatest players of all time at the same time."
"What I see and what maybe has happened to him is that all of a sudden he's feeling the age, and it just came out of nowhere, and yes, he felt it for a while. But all of a sudden it just seems like your experience cannot balance out the things you lose by biology and sheer the aging process."
The former WTA No. 9 likened Murray's current struggles to her own. Petkovic argues that as she grew older, she found herself on the same level field as the rest of the players she would normally beat at her peak, asserting that there was no way of defying biology, even for the greats in tennis.
"If this is the pack of all the players when I was playing my best, I was here right, so just above it, so when I started getting older and worse, all of a sudden, I was in the same line as the pack, right, so if I had a bad day I would lose."
"Andy Murray, Serena Williams, and Novak Djokovic, these types of players, they are way ahead of the pack, so when they start aging and start playing worse, they are still a little bit above the pack. You know they are still beating most of these players. However, at one point biology just catches up with everyone."