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Andy Murray has revealed that he doesn’t miss tennis as much as he thought he would during retirement, with the Briton saying that he feels “really free”.
The 37-year-old retired after the Olympics in August, after a remarkable 19-year career in which he won Wimbledon twice and the US Open once, alongside winning two gold medals in the men’s singles in 2012 and 2016.
The Scot suffered from plenty of injury problems towards the end of his career, having had hip surgery in 2019, and said that he originally expected to “find retirement hard and be missing tennis a lot”.
However Murray has found that he is relishing the freedom that has come with the end to his playing days.
“Since I’ve stopped, I feel really free and have got lots of time to do whatever it is I want,” Murray told BBC Radio 4. “I can dedicate time to my children and have free time to play golf or go to the gym on my own terms.
“It is really nice and I didn’t expect that. I was expecting to find retirement hard and be missing tennis a lot and wanting to get back on the tennis court on tour.
“So far it has been the complete opposite to what I was thinking. “
Murray played 1,001 singles matches over the course of his career, but eventually found that leaving his four children and wife Kim for long periods was tricky as he tried to balance parenthood with playing.
“The thing that I always found difficult in recent years was that there was always a guilt associated with what I was doing,” explained Murray.
“If I was going away for a trip of like three to four weeks I would feel guilty leaving my children at home or being away from my wife for a long time with them, so missing the kids I found hard,” he added.
“But if I was at home with the kids then I was running around and spending a lot of my time on my feet after training.
“I was then thinking ‘is this going to affect my training or performance the next day, should I have my feet up?’ I found that stuff difficult over the last few years.”
