| Advertisement |
Andy Murray returned to the court after a bout with shingles to cruise to a 6-4, 6-1 first-round victory over Malek Jaziri at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship on Tuesday. The top-seeded Murray needed just 79 minutes to dispatch the Tunisian while posting the victory in his first match since losing in the fourth round of the Australian Open five weeks ago.
Advertisement
The layoff certainly wasn't an easy time for Murray as he was diagnosed with shingles, a form of adult chickenpox, which results in painful rashes on the skin.
Murray was unsure what was going on until his mother-in-law inspected his body.
"I had a little bit of a rash basically like on my bum 'round to kind of my stomach, and it wasn't terrible," Murray told reporters. "But then normally if you have a little bit of a rash and you scratch it, it feels better. But with that, it was really, really painful.
"I didn't think much of it at the beginning, and then it was actually my wife's mum, we were having dinner, and I was, like, 'This is really irritating.' She was, like, 'Pull your pants down. Show me. It might be shingles.'"
"I was, like, 'OK'. Then the next day, got a doctor, and she was right."
The Britain star was given medicine to take and a cream to apply and now he is healed.
"The rash is completely gone now, and I felt fine when I was training," Murray said. "I don't think I'd be able to do what I was doing out there this evening if (I still had it). A lot of people said that afterwards, once the rash is gone, that you can feel very tired for quite a few weeks, a number of weeks afterwards.
"I was maybe a little bit more tired than usual at the beginning, but I really feel fine now."
Meanwhile, second-seeded Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland was sent packing by Bosnia's Damir Dzumhur.
Dzumhur, ranked 77th in the world, recorded a 7-6 (4), 6-3 win over Wawrinka in what rates as the biggest victory of his career.
Dzumhur owned a 5-1 lead in the second set when he began to feel the pressure of closing out the victory.
"I got a little bit tight. I felt it, and Stan felt it too," Dzumhur said. "So he just tried to put some balls in the court. It's not easy to finish a game with those players. They know how to play when they are down, when they want to come back. But yeah, I found a way in the end."
Wawrinka was playing for the first time since losing in the Australian Open semifinals. He said the knee that has been bothering him was not a factor in the loss.
"In practice, I started to be OK the last few days, but today I was missing a little bit of something," Wawrinka said. "He started also to play a bit better, to put a little bit more first serves in, to put a little bit more pressure on."
Two other seeded players were in action with fifth-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic and seventh-seeded Lucas Pouille of France both advancing.
Berdych was leading 6-3, 2-1 when fellow Czech Lukas Rosol retired due to a knee injury. Pouille notched a 6-2, 6-2 win over Adam Pavlasek of the Czech Republic.
