Andy Murray will have a chance to compete at the 2024 Olympic Games, but he's not really sold on actually playing at the event.
This year has been a proper reality check for Murray, whose career took a turn for the worse late last year. By the end of the year, Murray was dealing with an injury that cost him the Davis Cup Finals and a bad run of results that extended into this year.
He lost multiple matches at the start of the year, earning his first win of the year in the Middle East. He's added a few after that but also dropped a bombshell retirement announcement, which is likely to happen over the summer.
Wimbledon looks as his most likely retirement destination, but he hasn't really named an event; he just hinted at being done sometime in the summer. The Olympics are held in the summer, and he confirmed to The Times that he'd like to play at the event, but there is a caveat.
Due to his recent run of results and the way his tennis has generally looked in the past 10 months, the Brit would only do so if he was certain he could fight for a medal. He doesn't really want to take someone else's spot because it's a huge event and it doesn't come around that often.
"I would love the chance to play in another Olympics but also genuinely only if I felt like there was a chance of winning a medal. I’m also very conscious as well that because of how amazing my experiences at the Olympics have been, I would want to be there by right and not just take one of the other guys’ spots because it is a brilliant opportunity."
"We have top doubles players [Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski are ranked inside the world’s top ten] and also Jack [Draper], Cam [Norrie] and Evo [Dan Evans] in singles as well."
That's a very nice way of thinking about it, but it's also reality. The event will be played on clay, and he really didn't look that great on that surface recently. He's one of the best Olympic performers we've seen recently, so his legacy is cemented.
"I don’t want to be in a position where I’m getting selected to play there just because it might be the last tournament that I play. That’s why there is a bit of uncertainty about the summer, because I’m not sure what will happen with that."