Andy Murray warned by Stan Wawrinka: 'I felt dead after my injury'

How will Andy Murray react to his comeback match against Nick Kyrgios on Tuesday night? According to Stan Wawrinka, who has spent the last year battling injury issues of his own, the first few days will be anything but comfortable.

“I felt dead,” was Wawrinka’s assessment of his own return to the tour, which came at January’s Australian Open. At the time, a first-round win over world No. 136 Ricardas Berankis looked like an encouraging start. But his run ended quickly, as he found himself almost unable to move 48 hours later.

The comparison is instructive, because if Murray keeps waking up in a similar state this week, he may decide that best-of-five-set matches at Wimbledon are more than he can handle at such an early stage.

“Two days after, my body was completely off,” said Wawrinka, who went out to the unheralded Tennys Sandgren in the Australian Open’s second round. “I lost 6-2, 6-1, 6-4, but I couldn't really do anything.

“That's mentally tough, because you have never experienced that in the past. So you need to learn from it, you need to adapt and accept it and be patient with yourself.”

Wawrinka spent 2hr 47min on court during the Berankis match, which he won in four sets. This proved to be a heavy commitment for a man who underwent two knee operations last year. For purposes of comparison, Kyrgios needed 2hr 39min to conclude his 2-6, 7-6, 7-5 victory over Murray.

The advantage of coming back at a grand slam is that you have a decent chance of playing a moderate opponent in the first round, whereas this Fever-Tree Championships draw is stacked with high-quality grass-courters. But the downside is the extra physicality of the best-of-five-set format.

“The difficult part, when you are injured, is to accept the process,” said Wawrinka, who lost a tight three-setter to Sam Querrey on Wednesday by a 7-5, 6-7, 6-1 scoreline. “If you want to practice three hours, you cannot. You're not allowed to. It's not good for you. You have to be patient and wait weeks or months to be able to do it.

“For me, it was like step by step, and the last step is to be 100 per cent physically ready and not going up and down during [matches lasting] five hours.

“I think I'm close to that. But there is only one way to do it. It's to keep working out, to keep playing tournaments, keep fighting. And then you put everything back together.”