Kim Murray admits it was “hard work” to live with husband Andy Murray despite his injuries

Kim Murray has spoken out about the challenges of living with her husband, tennis champion Andy Murray, through the injuries and losses of his 20-year career.

Andy, 37, finished his last tournament with a doubles defeat at the Paris Olympics after retiring from singles competition.

He began dating Kim in 2005, the daughter of player-turned-coach Nigel Sears. The couple announced their engagement in 2014 and married the following year. They have four children.

In a new interview with The TelegraphKim, 36, has opened up about the behind-the-scenes struggles of her success and admitted living with her husband became “hard work” after her winning streak took a hit.

When a hip injury forced Andy to withdraw from the US Open and Paris in 2017, the Scot lost his top ranking to Rafael Nadal while his wife was pregnant with their second child.

“It was really horrible to see on a human level,” Kim, a painter, said of that period. “He had reached the top of his sport and was at home with Sophia. [their daughter]and he was in too much pain to get down on the floor and play with her. It was really horrible.

“It was very difficult to live with him all that time. I was trying to raise a small child and he was really very unwell. He was in a lot of pain. Even walking the dog was horrible. And I thought it was horrible too, because it was such hard work.”

Andy struggled to fully recover from the injury and underwent surgeries in 2018 and 2019.

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“He tried a lot of things, but the impact of the injury came over a very long period of his career,” Kim continued.

“He was absolutely determined to recover after hip replacement surgery and he did so incredibly. [Andy returned to the circuit four months after surgery]But then Covid came. The timing was very cruel. I had just started to gain momentum and everything shut down.”

As well as the challenges of watching her husband battle his injuries, Kim, who says she has “always found the WAG thing quite off-putting”, was receiving scrutinising comments from friends during a period of match defeats.

“There was a period [in 2019] “When he was losing almost every week, it was tough to watch Andy deal with that almost every day. My friends would ask me, “Is Andy okay?” I would say, “Well, your husband doesn’t get a weekly evaluation at the office to see how well he’s doing, so no, he’s not okay.”

Kim admitted: “It was a hard thing for me to support Andy, but I’m proud of the small part I played. He definitely couldn’t have done it without me.”