Murray injury ends Paris hope and threatens Wimbledon bid

The only thing the 20-year-old Scot can be clear about is that he will not be at Roland Garros, after a specialist informed him his right wrist will certainly not be ready for a fortnight on the clay.

Scroll down to read more:

There can be no guarantees, either, about whether the injury sustained last week in Hamburg will allow him to compete at the All England Club when the Championships start on June 25.

The most optimistic thing that can be said is that, at his age, time tends to be a speedy healer.

Murray issued his injury update by proclamation on his personal website, although details for his followers were scant.

"I saw the doctor yesterday and, as I expected, I am going to have to withdraw from the French Open," he said. "The good news is that I got the cast off and will start treatment tomorrow and take it day by day.

"I'm not going to make any decisions on the grass yet. I'm going to see the doctor in a week to see how it feels and how much the inflammation has settled. One real positive from the injury is that I can get in the gym six days a week and work on my cardio and leg strength."

But there is no question that caution is going to be the watchword with this injury, especially as it is believed Murray may have suffered a small tear in the tendon.

According to his management, they will wait until the withdrawal deadline of two weeks on Friday before deciding if he can take his place in the field for the Artois tournament at west London's Queen's Club, which starts on June 11.

The wrist is so complex that no two injuries are the same, but there are legions of tennis players through the ages whose examples suggest that hurrying back would be short-term folly.

Boris Becker suffered the injury during a fourth-round match at Wimbledon and last week recalled: "It took me three or four months to recover and at least a year to stop thinking about it."

That psychological dimension is one reason to believe that, while winning at the All England Club may be Murray's destiny, it is not going to happen in 2007.

Another is that he may feel it right to consider tinkering with the tools of his trade - something all professionals are loathe to do - in order to avoid a repetition. Murray is known to load his racket head with lead tape, which is perfectly legal, to improve his swing-power ratio and help him to cannon the ball off the forehand with minimal wind-up.

While highly effective for someone with such exceptional hand skills, it is a measure that also adds to the risk of wrist injuries.

It would be asking an enormous amount of Murray to come back and, in the best-case scenario, start reeling off wins sufficiently quickly to give him the preparation he needs for a serious challenge at Wimbledon.

The preference may be for him to focus more on the American hard-court season that leads into the U.S. Open at the end of August.

Having dropped one place to No 11 in the rankings after missing so much tennis since the end of March he will, nonetheless, be loathe to give up any more ground to talented contemporaries such as Novak Djokovic.

The guardians of British tennis will also be uneasy about the desperate lack of depth in both the men's and women's games being brutally exposed without the fig-leaf of one outstanding performer this summer.

As for Tim Henman, 32 and with an unpredictable back condition, he must have thought that his days of being in sole charge of British hopes were over.