Murray must be feeling déjà vu ahead of 2018

Andy Murray has been here before.

The first time he split with coach Ivan Lendl back in 2014 Murray was dealing with back surgery. Then, the goal was recovering his form and fitness—goals not particularly suited to Lendl’s considerable gifts as a coach, which has been to help an already in-form Murray develop a champion’s mettle.

As the 2017 season closes, Murray is once again at a crossroads. He’s healing a hip injury, Lendl is gone again and he has to try to rediscover the form that saw him reach world No. 1 for the first time at the end of 2016.

Some commenting on Murray’s situation seem to think it’ll be a long while yet before the 30-year-old is back to his old self. It seems unlikely that he should expect the kind of off-the-bat success that Federer and Nadal gained in their comeback 2017 seasons.

Most likely, Murray would agree. What Federer and Nadal achieved, so soon after what looked like steep declines in their games, defied all expectations—including their own.

Expectation. Murray will now examine his own relationship to it as he plots his comeback, beginning with the Australian Open where Murray has reached the final five times.

In his 2014 comeback season, these were Murray’s results at the Slams:

Of course, the success of a player’s season—even one of Murray’s caliber—isn’t wholly determined by Grand Slam results, especially after missing significant time. But in this case, Murray’s 2014 Grand Slam results tell a compelling story.

His failure to make it past the quarters at three of four Slams indicated a player who struggled mightily to beat anyone in the Top 10, and on any given day, was vulnerable to players ranked outside the Top 20. Were his struggles the result of rust? Diminished fitness? Waning confidence with each loss? A locker room sensing that he wasn’t quite himself?

The mental and physical challenges of making a comeback aside, no doubt the uncertainty of ever returning to the summit of the sport plagued Murray’s recovery, too. In many ways, it took capturing his second Wimbledon title en route to becoming world No. 1 in 2016 to complete the comeback that began in 2014.

Herein lies powerful knowledge for Murray. He knows he can climb back to the top, but that it may not happen according to plan, that there’s no script for when the comeback kid finally gets his due. It might take two months or two years. It might take a rash of stinging losses. Or it may take no time at all. Maybe it starts with having no expectations, much the way Federer entered his 2017 season.

Knowing that can only help Murray through what is bound to be a rollercoaster 2018.