Sir Andy Murray reveals he told family he wanted to quit tennis

Tennis star Sir Andy Murray said he told his family he wanted to quit tennis several times when struggling with injury.

The two-time Wimbledon champion said his attitude to the game has been transformed after an operation to deal with severe hip pain.

He said a new documentary, Andy Murray: Resurfacing, which charts his comeback from injury following hip surgery, was “difficult” to watch in parts as he was “quite vulnerable” at points.

In an interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s The Kaye Adams Programme, he said: “There were probably three or four different times in the last 18 months where I had had conversations with my family and also with my team that I did want to stop.

“I wasn’t enjoying playing, I didn’t enjoy competing, I didn’t enjoy all the preparation and training that was going into it because it was just really physically uncomfortable.”

He said once the pain had disappeared three months after his latest operation in January 2019, it made him rethink his priorities and rediscover his love for the sport.

“For a large part of my professional career my mood was probably dictated by how I was doing on the tennis court whereas now I’ve realised being pain-free and healthy is more important than that,” he said.

“Getting to play tennis for your job, basically, for your living, is a great position to be in.”

Sir Andy, who took his newborn son Teddy to the premiere in London on Monday, said it was the first time he had watched the documentary, having avoiding doing so previously as he does not like seeing himself on camera.

He said a voice note to director Olivia Cappuccini was left at his “one of lowest points” in December 2018, when he battled severe hip pain and contemplated quitting tennis.

In it, he told her how tennis helped him deal with childhood trauma, including the impact of the Dunblane massacre.

He said his family knew Thomas Hamilton, who murdered 16 children and a teacher before turning the gun on himself at Dunblane Primary School in 1996.

Sir Andy and his brother, seven-time Grand Slam-winning doubles player Jamie, were pupils at the school at the time.

He also told the director how tennis helped deal with his parents divorce and his brother leaving home in the following two years.

Sir Andy said: “My feeling towards tennis is that it’s an escape for me in some ways because all of these things are stuff that I have bottled up.”

The documentary is available on Amazon Prime Video from Friday.