LONDON — Andy Murray, one of the last decade's most successful male tennis players, has pulled out of the singles tournament at what is almost certain to be his last Wimbledon, his team confirmed Tuesday.
Murray, 37, who has won the Wimbledon singles title twice and the U.S Open once, has been battling to be fit to play at the All England Club for weeks.
He is recovering from surgery to remove a spinal cyst 10 days ago, which left him visibly in pain and unable to move his right leg at Queens Club in London last month, a traditional warm-up tournament for Wimbledon.
Although he plans to play in the men's doubles alongside his brother, Jamie, it appears Murray will not appear again alone on Centre Court. He had been due to face Czech player Tomáš Machác in the singles at 1:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m. ET) Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, despite working incredibly hard on his recovery since his operation just over a week ago, Andy has taken the very difficult decision not to play the singles this year,” his team said in a statement reported by Sky News.
“As you can imagine, he is extremely disappointed but has confirmed that he will be playing in the doubles with Jamie and looks forward to competing at Wimbledon for the last time.”
Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.
Wishing him well in a post on X, Wimbledon said it was “sorry to hear you won’t be playing singles this year.”
Murray also still hopes to appear at the Paris Olympics, after which, he has said, he will retire from the sport.
The news caps a glittering career on the ATP singles tour, which placed Murray at No. 1 in the world for 41 weeks. He was in the top 10 male players in the world for almost 10 years, from July 2008 to October 2017.
For a time, the media included Murray in the so-called Big Four group of players, along with Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal.
Murray, who is Scottish, became the first male British singles champion since Fred Perry in 1936, becoming one of the most lauded British sports stars in the process.
Murray has a long history with multiple injuries, and he declared in 2017 that it was unlikely he would compete in a professional tournament again after he withdrew from the U.S. Open because of a recurring hip injury.
Successive operations allowed him, against the odds, to return to elite tennis, and he reached the third round of Wimbledon in 2021. A third-round match at the Australian Open last year lasted 5 hours and 45 minutes, a career record.
But his old form has been elusive, and fans have nervously watched on, waiting for Murray to pull up in pain.
Murray said at a news conference last week that didn’t want his Queens appearance to be his last singles appearance.
“I know that there’s more important things in the world than how I finish playing my last tennis match or where I finished playing my last tennis match,” he said.
“But because of what I put into the sport over the last however many years, I would at least like to go out playing a proper match where I’m at least competitive, not what happened at Queens.”
