Wild Card Felciano Lopez Captures Queen’s Club Singles Crown and Wins Doubles Title with Andy Murray
(June 23, 2019) World No. 113 Feliciano Lopez won his second Queen’s Club Championship title on Sunday, beating Frenchman Gilles Simon 6-2, 6-7(4), 7-6(2). Lopez came into the tournament as a wild card and also won the doubles title with Andy Murray, playing his first tournament since another hip surgery in January.
The pair defeated Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury 7-6(6), 5-7, 10-5.
The Spaniard is the first man since Mark Philippoussis in 1997 to capture both the singles and doubles trophy in the same year at The Queen’s Club.
It’s incredible. It’s tough to believe, actually. I won this tournament in 2017. That was the best win of my career. And then I did it again two years after, and then I won the doubles half an hour after,” Lopez said in his news conference.
“So it’s tough to believe, honestly. It’s something that might never happen again. I’m so happy, and I just don’t believe everything that happened during the week. I don’t know. I need more time to reflect on everything that happened this week.”
Andy Murray talked about his week back on the court and potentially playing singles again in the future:
“This is very different for me, and it’s more special than a lot of the singles tournaments that I have won for a lot of different reasons.
Like, I just won the doubles here with Feli, you know, with a metal hip. It’s mental, really,” he said smiling. “Yeah, that’s a cool thing to be able to have done, and yeah, just because of probably where I was a few months ago. And at times, even as far as just two months ago, I was not — I just wasn’t thinking about this. It was not something that was, like, I was not driven to get back to, like, playing here and stuff.
“I was just really, really happy just to be pain-free and enjoying life, literally just doing normal things. So it’s really special.”
“I’m happy with playing tennis and training and having no pain anymore. If I keep progressing, I would like to try to play singles. I think I have a couple of options, like, after Wimbledon, is either I continue with doubles but start training and practicing singles through the US Open swing, and then try and maybe play singles after that. Or I take a longer break post-Wimbledon of maybe, let’s say, a month or six weeks to get myself ready for singles and then try and play close to the US Open time.
“I guess those would be sort of the two options. I don’t anticipate it would be much longer than that. My schedule, you know, could potentially be a bit different. I might not play three weeks in a row or two weeks back to back, for example.
“But I’m just quite happy doing what I’m doing just now and just taking each week as it comes. You know, if things keep going well, I’ll try and play singles. If I start training and I think actually I’m not going to compete at a level I’m happy with, yeah.”
“It would be nice to play at the US Open, but if I don’t — look, I got so much enjoyment and happiness after winning a first-round doubles match here that, you know, that’s enough.
“Like, I don’t have to be, like, getting to the US Open this year and be, you know, really competitive and have to, you know, win the tournament for me to enjoy it.
“You know, it would be nice, but I don’t really — I really don’t mind. So I’m going to go at my own pace and hopefully, like Feli said, that I keep progressing, but I’m sure at some stage it will come, you know, a bit of a plateau because it’s been, like, very quick and constant improvements just now, but I still have to improve quite a few things, like, physically.
“It’s not just to get back on the court playing singles. Like, it’s to protect my hip for the longer term to make sure that my muscles are in the correct balance so that I’m not impacting the hip in the same spot all of the time. I need to improve the range of motion in my hip, as well, like, you know, so that when I’m changing direction and things that there is a bit more freedom for it to move around.
“That’s what I’m doing. So it’s not just about this week or next week. Like, I want it to last for, you know, a long time, because it’s nice feeling like this.”
Murray Makes Winning Return with Lopez on Day of Upsets in Singles at Queen’s Club
