Andy Murray is set to revisit his old rivalry with Stan Wawrinka at the French Open... as British tennis star reveals why he chose to return to Roland Garros

It is a curious coincidence that, a couple of weeks before being drawn to play each other in the first round of the French Open tonight, Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka happened to be sitting next to each other on an easyJet flight.

They swapped stories about being the only two men — with three Grand Slam titles each — to seriously disrupt the Big Three’s monopoly.

‘When we flew from Bordeaux to Geneva, we sat next to each other and ended up talking about the matches we have played and the psychological difficulties of the players we were competing against,’ revealed Murray.

‘For him, Roger [Federer] was someone he grew up idolising and then seeing him on the other side of the net, it’s really difficult. 

'For me, when I was playing in major finals, I was always opposite Roger or Novak [Djokovic]. It’s not easy to break that mould.

‘Winning the first one for me was really hard. If you look at the players Roger and Rafa [Nadal] and Novak beat to win their first Slam, they were all players that hadn’t won a Slam themselves.

‘It’s a bit different coming up against them in finals where they have won 10, 11 majors.’

The two old campaigners —Murray is 37 and Wawrinka 39 — will face off in the first night session of this year’s French Open. 

That will mean Murray’s last three matches here have been against the Swiss.

He was thrashed in the first round in 2020 and his hip never recovered from a brutal 2017 semi-final. 

Asked why, in what is likely to be his final year on tour, he has returned to a tournament he has often skipped, Murray said: ‘A lot of the time my team felt it was better to prepare for the grass.

‘I have missed playing here the last few years. Particularly when fit and healthy. Why wouldn’t you?’