Andy Murray withdraws from Brisbane with hip injury

Murray’s hip injury severely hampered his 2017 season after finishing 2016 as the world number one.

Brisbane was scheduled to be Murray’s competitive return to the court.

Murray said: I’m very disappointed. I came here with every intention of making a strong start to the year but sadly my team and I don’t feel that I’m where I need to be just yet to compete at the highest level”

“I have always enjoyed competing in front of the Queensland fans. I look forward to returning in the near future”

He was scheduled to play Ryan Harrison in the second round.

Some early reports suggested that Murray still intends to compete at the Australian Open.

Speaking to the press upon his arrival in Brisbane Murray admitted there were concerns over his hip still but stressed he wanted to just enjoy playing tennis again.

I just want to be able to play tennis,” Murray said.

“I don’t mind if it’s 30 in the world level. I would love it to be No 1 in the world level, but yeah, I just want to play. When that’s taken away from you, you realise how important it is.

“I want to get back to playing my best tennis and winning the biggest tournaments. But if I don’t, I’m okay with that. I just want to keep playing. On a day-to-day basis, it’s difficult to tell exactly what my level is, when you’ve had such high expectations for quite a long time.

“When I have a few bad days, I might feel like I’m playing really poorly, but I might still be good enough to beat top 30, top 40 in the world, which is still a really, really high level… I’ll see when I get back on the match court.

“At Wimbledon, I almost made the semi-finals and I was really struggling badly. So if it’s better than that then that’s positive.

“But playing the matches and getting used to that intensity again and how you recover from a match is kind of what is important. And I’m hoping I’m going to be okay, but you never know for sure until you go through it.”