Judy Murray, Andy Murray's mother, has been cited in some news articles this week over a comment about Andy Murray. For instance, tennisworldusa.org published an article on August 16Th titled "Mother Judy fears Andy Murray could soon be forced to quit tennis." The comment that has been attributed to Mrs. Murray is as follows: "The thing that worries me now is that Andy may not play for much longer. He has been around for 12 years playing at the top of the game." (August 16th 2017/Judy Murray qtd, by Dzevad Mesic). Apparently, that comment shouldn't have anything to do with retirement buzz.
Recently I published an article looking at that comment, suggesting that it could have something to do with Andy Murray retiring, albeit not with any kind of temporal qualification (ie. it doesn't mean that retirement is imminent). However, Judy appears to have meant something else, as she sent me a tweet a short time after the original article on this topic was published.
What does her statement mean?
Replying to my tweet of my own article Mrs. Murray tweeted "I didn't make any retirement comments." That reply would suggest that she didn't want her previously cited remark to be taken to start a discussion on the topic of Andy Murray retiring. People that make comments are the ones best suited to define what they mean by them, however, I do find it hard not to take the comment as pertaining to the topic of retirement still.
That certainly doesn't mean that retirement is imminent by any stretch for the current World No. 1 as the phrase "Andy may not play for much longer" could have a lot of different time spans associated with it, including a couple of years. I asked if if the quoted comment pertained to the topic of retirement in a reply, but had not received a reply at the time of this writing, perhaps due to the late hour in Europe.
I didn't make any retirement comments.
— judy murray (@JudyMurray) August 18, 2017
Murray's short-term history in a nutshell
At this point Andy Murray has a bad hip, and has missed two Masters Series events since the end of Wimbledon. Tim Henman suggested that he should sit out the rest of the season, and Murray's mother has been cited as saying that she is worried "that Andy may not play for much longer" as his drop in the world rankings is imminent.
But, to be clear, she tweeted that she hasn't made comments on the topic of retirement.
I won't exactly beg for forgiveness for thinking that the statement "Andy may not play for much longer" has something to do with his retirement -- whether eventual or imminent. I also won't beg for forgiveness for assigning importance to her statement. She did, after all, hint that Murray was less than 100% heading into Wimbledon and that turned out to be correct. I will, however, allow people to define their own words in case I've misinterpreted them in error or in case comments are being attributed to them that aren't theirs. If she replies and tells me what she meant then I'll provide an update. Otherwise, I'm not reorganizing my mental dictionary in such a way that the statement "Andy may not play for much longer" doesn't have at least something to do with the topic of his eventual retirement.
"Andy may not play for much longer." Doesn't pertain to retirement?
— Shane Lambert (@UncoolNegated) August 18, 2017