Andy Murray told whether he would struggle to win titles on the ATP Tour in 2025

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Andy Murray played his final professional match 429 days ago at the 2024 Olympic Games.

After 20+ years of service to tennis, Murray retired in 2024, when he and Dan Evans lost to Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul in the Olympic doubles event.

The 38-year-old had struggled with injuries for the best part of a decade, failing to remain competitive after his career-best year in 2016.

Had Murray remained injury-free, he may well have added to his tally of three Grand Slams and 41 weeks as world number one.

However, it is unclear how he would have adapted to the different style of tennis we often see from top-ten players on the ATP Tour today.

Weighing in with his thoughts, former world number five Jimmy Arias has suggested whether Murray would struggle in today’s game.

Jimmy Arias thinks Andy Murray would still have a place on the ATP Tour in 2025

Appearing as a guest on ‘Monday Match Analysis’, Arias was asked whether Murray would struggle to keep up with some of the big-hitters on tour in 2025.

“It’s hard to answer that because he did what he did so well,” he said.

“His anticipation was a joke.”

The American then looked back on one of the first times he watched Murray play, at the 2006 Washington Open.

“I remember the first time I realised he was a little bit different, he was playing the Washington DC tournament, playing an American-Russian player [Dmitry Tursunov] who hit the ball as hard as he could,” said Arias.

“He’s playing [Andy] Murray in the quarters, and he’s playing unbelievably the Russian. He’s hitting the c— out of the ball, and I’m thinking Murray is going to be in trouble. Murray’s massaging the ball around, and I think he could get overpowered.

“I hadn’t seen Murray that much yet; he was young, probably 19. Murray made him look like an idiot, beat him 6-2, 6-2 [actually 6-2, 7-5] in 50 minutes, just took that pace, redirected it.

“There was no chance to hit winners; he was just there, waiting on the ball all the time.

“He had that next level of A) great speed, but also unbelievable court sense; he knew where the ball was going to be.

“Even return of serve, he was getting no free points on serve, Murray was just making every ball.”

With that in mind, Arias believes Murray would still be able to compete in this current era of men’s tennis.

“I still think that if you are a guy like that, no matter how big someone serves, you’re making them play every ball, big servers hate that,” he said.

“If you have that type of feel and movement and ability to handle pace, you probably still have a place in the game.”

Arias thinks Murray’s game is well-suited to combat big servers, but how did he get on against the likes of John Isner and Ivo Karlovic during his career?

Andy Murray’s record against big servers

According to ‘Serve Rating’, the following ten players are the greatest servers in ATP Tour history.

Interestingly enough, Murray holds winning head-to-head records against seven of the top ten.

• Andy Murray (8-1) John Isner
• Andy Murray (7-0) Ivo Karlovic
• Andy Murray (9-4) Milos Raonic
• Andy Murray (1-0) Reilly Opelka
• Andy Murray (8-3) Andy Roddick
• Andy Murray (6-1) Nick Kyrgios
• Andy Murray (11-14) Roger Federer
• Andy Murray (6-2) Kevin Anderson

The Brit never played either Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard or Joachim Johansson, so he only lost one head-to-head, to Roger Federer.

Whether he would have had as much success against the best servers in today’s game is up for debate, but it’s safe to assume Murray would’ve found a way to compete.

Now retired from tennis, Murray doesn’t have to worry about returning the biggest serves on tour anymore, and can instead focus on his true passion… golf!