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World No. 121 Andy Murray has admitted that the comments like the one Eurosport pundit Mats Wilander made provide a short-term motivation. Murray, who won only a total of six games in his French Open first round match against Stan Wawrinka, was criticized by Wilander after the match as the Eurosport pundit said the Briton should “stop taking wildcards from the young players.”
“I think anything like that it gives short-term motivation, it helps,” Murray said, per Metro UK. “I don’t think longer term, like in a month’s time, that’s necessarily something that I will be thinking about but off the back of the French Open and kind of how I was feeling physically since the US Open, I properly went and had a think about things and did some testing and stuff.”
Murray determined to get in the best shape possible
“I did an interview a couple of days ago with Daniela Hantuchova and she was asking me what was still motivating me, why do you want to get back in shape, and it was something as simple as I got on this body fat percentage scale thing, and the readout that I got from that I wasn’t happy with it,” Murray revealed.
“And a little thing like that, I was like, right, I can get myself in much better shape than I’m in just now. I’ve worked hard to get to this point but I can do better. I could make sure I’m eating better, I can make sure I’m stronger in the gym, and I guess with an extended off season, it’s going to allow me to do that.
“Usually when it’s only four or five weeks long, that can be tricky to make big gains in that time. But if it’s, for me, going to be potentially 10-12 weeks, that’s the length of time a boxer would have to train for a big fight and you can get yourself in great shape in that time.
“So that’s what I’m working towards and that’s something that off the back of the French Open and then having some testing done that I wasn’t particularly happy with, that was kind of enough to just change my mentality enough and just focus on what’s really important, what I can do to get back to where I want to get to.”
Murray kicked off his 2020 season at the Cincinnati Masters in August and played four tournaments before calling it a season.
