Murray: ‘We Want Our Normal Lives Back’

Andy Murray has been having a blast competing in the Mutua Madrid Open Virtual Pro, crushing opponents and enjoying himself with plenty of banter along the way.

But this virtual event is going on because of the suspension of play due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Brit took some time to address the seriousness of what is going on in the world.

“I’m sure all tennis players want to get back to playing and competing as soon as possible. But right now that’s just not the most important thing. We want, first of all, just to get our normal lives back. Just being able to go out and go see friends and go to restaurants and just have the normal freedoms that you have and then hopefully over time things will start to allow for traveling and then hopefully sport,” Murray said. “The first thing is to try to find a way to stop the virus spreading and then once we’ve done that, we’ll be able to do more normal things that everybody does rather than thinking about competing at sport.”

On 1 April, In conjunction with the cancellation of The Championships, Wimbledon, the ATP and WTA jointly announced the continued suspension of the ATP and WTA Tours until 13 July 2020, due to the coronavirus.

“A lot of people want to watch sport again, so obviously the athletes and the players would love to be competing and lots of people love to watch sport because it’s entertaining and it’s something that lots and lots of people enjoy,” Murray said. “When you don’t get to see it for a while, then people realise maybe how much they love playing it and how much they enjoy watching it. But just because it’s difficult to not have sport just now doesn’t mean that we have to speed things up… let’s just focus on getting our normal lives back first and hopefully all of the countries can sort out the virus properly.”