Murray confident after Queen’s title boost

World number two pleased with win over Cilic before Wimbledon.

LONDON: World number two Andy Murray believes his third Queen’s Club title will act as the perfect foundation to launch his latest bid to win Wimbledon.

Murray hardly had time to finish celebrating Sunday’s 5-7, 7-5, 6-3 victory over Croatian fifth-seed Marin Cilic in the final of the pre-Wimbledon warm-up event, before thoughts turned to his prospects of ending Britain’s 75-year wait for a male winner of the singles title at the All England Club.

All in all it was an extremely satisfying seven days for Murray with Wimbledon just a week away.

“I feel good,” said Murray. “I’m a bit tired just now. It’s been a long five days.

“The last couple of days were tough matches against two top grasscourt players. Because of the way that the weather worked out, it’s been mentally a quite draining week. I’m happy I managed to finish it with a win.



“So I’ll go away and probably take a day off and then start hitting and work on a couple of things in the build-up to Wimbledon.”

According to him, the most important thing in the next week or so was just to make sure he kept improving the strength of his back to ensure there were no setbacks.

“And when Wimbledon comes round it’s all about how you play. Anything can happen. You can lose a bit of confidence; you can gain confidence. You can pick up a niggle; you can feel 110%. You never know. But I’m in a good place and I just need to keep working hard the next week.”

Since losing to Nicolas Mahut in the second round at Queen’s last year, Murray has been in dominant form on grass.

He reached his first Wimbledon final, losing to Roger Federer, and then returned to the All England Club a few weeks later to avenge that loss by thrashing the Swiss great for Olympic gold.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2013.