Late-night video games hampered Andy Murray’s tennis
Sir Andy Murray became so addicted to video games that it affected his performance on court.Murray, the winner of three Gland Slam events, including two Wimbledon championships, admitted that he had been obsessed with gaming and would stay up into the early hours playing before big matches.He never
www.thetimes.co.uk
Sir Andy Murray became so addicted to video games that it affected his performance on court.
Murray, the former Wimbledon men’s singles tennis champion and winner of two other Grand Slam titles, admitted that he had been obsessed with gaming and would stay up into the early hours playing before big matches.
He never travelled to tournaments around the world without his Playstation. Late-night sessions of games like Pro Evolution Soccer left him feeling tired when he took to the court hours later, he said.
He gave up gaming while at big events a few years ago, just before the most successful period in his career.
“I would travel with a Playstation everywhere until probably I was like 26,” Murray, now 32, said in an interview with the BBC online.
“I was playing way too much. I had to play tennis the next day and I was playing until like 2 or 3am. It would be hours, not minutes. Pro Evolution Soccer is what I used to play.”
Murray’s former coach Brad Gilbert said that the Scot played video games for seven hours a day when they were working together in 2006 and 2007.
He said that the player’s “obsession” with the games had caused rows between them.
Murray is now playing again after undergoing a hip resurfacing operation in January and he and his wife Kim had their third child, a boy called Teddy, last month.
An Amazon documentary on his comeback released last month shows the impact the injury had on his professional and family life.
In the film, Murray is seen playing with his daughters Sophia, three, and two-year-old Edie at home in Oxshott, Surrey, and dancing to the children’s song Baby Shark. However, the fiercely private sportsman had the girls filmed from behind throughout the documentary and their faces are not shown.
In the documentary Murray reveals how tennis helped him deal with the Dunblane school massacre and his parents’ divorce. He was in the school at the time of the shootings and knew Thomas Hamilton, the killer.
Murray has also admitted that the injury which threatened to end his career put a strain on his marriage. He said his chronic hip pain left him feeling “down” and affected his relationship his wife, Kim, 31.