Andy Murray has suffered his first defeat since returning from hip surgery following his first-round loss at Eastbourne on Tuesday. The Brit and playing partner Marcelo Melo were beaten 6-2 6-4 by Colombian top seeds Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal in the men’s doubles at the Nature Valley International.
The former world number one had made a triumphant return to competitive action by winning the doubles alongside playing partner Feliciano Lopez at Queen’s last week. Indeed, Murray and Lopes beat Farah and Cabal en route to winning that tournament, but the Colombians were always in control this time around at Devonshire Park.
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Murray was broken in three of his four service games and must now turn his attention to Wimbledon, where he is yet to decide whether he will play in both the men’s doubles and the mixed doubles. The 32-year-old is due to partner France’s Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the men’s doubles and admits, at this stage, it may be too much of a risk to also compete in the mixed.
“I spoke to some of the doubles players the last few days about why they don’t always play mixed and they just said they had some situations where the weather has not always been so good,” Murray was quoted as saying by the BBC.
“And because doubles is best of five [sets], and you play with the advantage scoring, you can get backed up and end up playing four matches in two days. I just need to be certain that my body’s ready for that. “So I’ll chat to my team a bit about that and decide probably by the end of tomorrow, I would imagine.”
