INDIAN WELLS (California) – After reuniting with his stinky shoes and wedding ring, Andy Murray was back in business as the former world number one sealed a comfortable 6-3 6-2 win over Frenchman Adrian Mannarino in the first round of the Indian Wells tournament.
Murray, who was the talk of social media this week as he asked for fans’ help in finding his items that went missing after training, fired five aces and struck 19 winners against Mannarino to secure his first victory at the Indian Wells since 2016.
The Briton will face 18-year-old Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz in the second round as he looks to improve on his best career finish at the tournament in 2015, when he reached the semi-finals.
The 34-year-old, who had hip surgeries in 2018 and 2019, has struggled to reclaim the kind of form that helped him win three Grand Slam titles and two consecutive Olympic singles gold medals in London and Rio de Janeiro.
Murray revealed the full story of how he retrieved the wedding ring and shoes he had originally lost after leaving them attached under his car at the hotel. Thankfully for the 34-year-old, he was reunited with both after making a plea on Instagram.
“The day after or the day that we realised they were let’s say misplaced or sort of someone had moved them, I went and I spoke to the lost and found a couple times at the hotel that day,” Murray said in his post-match press conference. “They said they’d found nothing. I spoke to security. They said they found nothing.
“I was like, ‘well, they’re gone’. I was going to file a police report to try to get them back or to increase my chance of getting them back. I went and spoke to the hotel, explained to them what I was going to do. They then decided to take all of my details down, the details of the shoes, ring, took me out to the car park and asked exactly where it was I parked. I asked them if they could look at the cameras.
“About an hour later they turned up. One of the employees at the hotel found them in their lost and found. Thankfully [I] managed to get them back, which was good.”
Murray admitted though when It came to the ring, this was not the first time he had faced such a scenario.
“There’s been a number of occasions where it’s fallen off my shoe,” Murray said. “Once I was swimming in a swimming pool. When my hands get cold, the ring can slide off. I lost it. Didn’t realise until later in the day.
Murray was pleased with his performance and concentration against the Frenchman, saying: “I think there’s many factors. It may not necessarily be that you’re not concentrating on the match, but it may be concentrating on the wrong things as well. I might be focused on maybe what just happened rather than what’s about to happen.
