Back in January, Andy Murray was at his lowest point regarding his intractable hip injury. Recently, he wrote on Instagram that as a child, all he wanted to do was play tennis and compete. He misses playing and would give anything to be back out there among his peers.

Murray said, “I didn’t realise until these last few months just how much I love this game. Everytime I wake up from sleeping or napping I hope that it’s better and it’s quite demoralising when you get on the court it’s not at the level you need it to be to compete at this level.”

This possibly explained Murray’s emotional reaction upon beating Marius Copil 6-7, 6-3, 7-6. With this win, he reached the Citi Open quarter-finals, his first since Wimbledon 2017. It was a gruelling 3hr 4min match because of earlier rain delays. As a result, it finished at 3.01am local time in Washington D.C.

Murray was concerned about scheduling especially after of his win. He and Copil started just before midnight local time and were still playing at 3am. Rain delayed the start of the day’s play by three hours. Added to that was a backlog of matches from Wednesday that played havoc with the tournament’s schedule.

Murray was also frustrated because his next match was scheduled for 8:30pm. He will be up against 19-year-old Australian Alex De Minaur in the quarterfinals. Murray even said that he “potentially” would have to pull out of the tournament.

His complaints are justified, given his lengthy lay-off and three draining three-set wins. The Briton is being pushed to his absolute limit physically.

But, irrespective of the result against De Minaur, this has been a positive week for Murray. He took things slowly during the grass-court season and it has paid off. His movement has been far better in Washington inspite of the grimacing in the final set against Copil.