Why Ivan Lendl would not have been the man to rebuild Andy Murray at this crossroads in his career

As Andy Murray plans his comeback in Australia in six weeks’ time, where he will be without Ivan Lendl following a mutual parting of the ways between the coach and player, the former world No 1 must have reflected on the last occasion when he returned to competition after a lengthy break.

Following back surgery in September 2013, Murray was off the court for more than three months. After returning at the start of 2014 he struggled to rediscover his best form and by the spring Lendl’s first spell as his coach was over.

After replacing Lendl with Amelie Mauresmo, Murray reached his first final for 14 months in September and only just scraped into the field for the year-ending World Tour Finals, where his season finished in a crushing 6-0, 6-1 defeat by Roger Federer.

It was a trying time for everyone in the Murray camp, but the patience of Mauresmo in particular paid off. In the first month of 2015 Murray was playing in the Australian Open final and by 2016 he was enjoying the best year of his career.

Mauresmo, who worked with Murray for nearly two years, never coached the Scot to a Grand Slam title, but she took him back to No 2 in the world rankings and you sense that her softly-spoken, thoughtful and caring approach was just what he needed at the time.

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If Murray is to go through similar travails this time around, when his absence from competition will have extended to nearly six months following the hip injury he suffered this summer, he might have been thinking that Lendl was not the ideal coach to have in his corner.

Lendl has many qualities and was clearly the key figure in turning him into a Grand Slam champion, but would he have been the man to nurse Murray through what is likely to be a very challenging time?

As a player Lendl reached the top of the world rankings and stayed there for 270 weeks thanks in large part to his ferocious appetite for hard work. As a coach he seemed to adopt a similar philosophy, which matched Murray’s own.

However, it might be no coincidence that Murray’s physical struggles in the first half of this year followed his traditional gruelling boot camp in Miami in December, when he might have been better advised to take a more cautious approach after his extraordinary exertions at the end of last season.

Murray’s overriding priority now will be his physical well-being. Although he talks optimistically about making a full recovery, it was clear during his exhibition charity match against Federer earlier this month that he was still limping. He will not need reminding that hip injuries have finished the careers of many players, including Gustavo Kuerten, Greg Rusedski and David Nalbandian.

Although Murray has always refused to reveal the exact nature of his hip problem, he says he has been advised that rest and treatment rather than surgery can restore him to full health. At this time last year Kevin Anderson was struggling with a hip problem and fearing that he would need an operation, but 10 months later the 31-year-old South African was playing in his first Grand Slam final at the US Open.

While Murray would clearly like to make a similar winning return, regaining full fitness is of much greater importance. Even if he did not win another match between now and the start of the clay-court season in April the current world No 16 would still be ranked around No 30, which would be a decent platform from which to step up his fightback.

It would therefore be no surprise if Murray does not replace Lendl for several months. Loyal figures like Jamie Delgado, who has filled in admirably as coach during Lendl’s lengthy absences, and Matt Little, his long-time fitness trainer, are the sort of people Murray wants around him now, just as he did at the end of 2014, when he parted company with Dani Vallverdu and Jez Green in the belief that not everyone in his camp was pulling in the same direction.

The second parting of the ways with Lendl probably suited the coach too. Given Lendl’s family commitments, his love of the golf course and the fact that he has spent so much of his life on airplanes, he was never keen on the travelling part of the job. He has also been enjoying his part-time role with the United States Tennis Association working with some promising young Americans.

Federer said on Saturday that he expects “greatness” from 30-year-old Murray when he returns, but “not maybe from the very beginning”. For the moment, fitness rather than form should be Murray’s only priority.