Murray Overcomes Ankle Injury and Troicki to Reach Semis
A couple days ago, Andy Murray twisted his ankle in the middle of his French Open match against Michael Berrer. After an injury timeout, Murray managed to still win the match with the ankle taped. Yesterday, Murray who has had a rather favorable draw at the
2011 French Open, seemed to be struggling with the ankle in the beginning of his match against Viktor Troicki and went down two sets to love. After removing the ankle taping, Murray climbed back to two sets all before darkness forced the suspension of the match until Tuesday. When they resumed play today, Murray was down 2-5 in the final/fifth set, but somehow managed to win five straight games, without even facing a match point, and reach the quarterfinals tomorrow.
It’s hard to tell how much the ankle injury is affecting Murray during his matches at this point. However, sometimes an injury can actually help a player perform even better despite the physical limitations/pain and lack of practice associated with the injury. The distraction of the injury/pain can often help a player to relax, albeit unconsciously, and then his/her tennis flows more freely. For example, after he first injured the ankle, Murray wasn’t moving very well against Berrer. Therefore, Murray hit out much more aggressively, which many have urged him to do in general anyway, but in this instance it helped shorten the points. In a similar way, Murray came back to two sets all against Troicki partly by hitting out more on his forehand after he removed the ankle taping. In the end, one hopes the ankle feels OK when Murray takes the court for the third straight day tomorrow in the quarterfinals against Argentine, Juan Ignacio Chela, a veteran clay-courter because this is a major opportunity for Murray to reach the semis.
It’s hard to tell how much the ankle injury is affecting Murray during his matches at this point. However, sometimes an injury can actually help a player perform even better despite the physical limitations/pain and lack of practice associated with the injury. The distraction of the injury/pain can often help a player to relax, albeit unconsciously, and then his/her tennis flows more freely. For example, after he first injured the ankle, Murray wasn’t moving very well against Berrer. Therefore, Murray hit out much more aggressively, which many have urged him to do in general anyway, but in this instance it helped shorten the points. In a similar way, Murray came back to two sets all against Troicki partly by hitting out more on his forehand after he removed the ankle taping. In the end, one hopes the ankle feels OK when Murray takes the court for the third straight day tomorrow in the quarterfinals against Argentine, Juan Ignacio Chela, a veteran clay-courter because this is a major opportunity for Murray to reach the semis.
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