Andy Murray admitted that he is no longer enjoying his tennis after suffering the most soul-crushing of defeats at the Paris Masters.

Murray won this event in 2016, as part of an unstoppable late-season run that carried him to the top of the world rankings. But such happy memories seemed a long away as he smashed his racket five times on the ground at the end of a disastrous loss to Alex de Minaur, the fleet-footed Australian who has become his nemesis this season.

For the second time in a month, Murray led de Minaur by 5-2 in the deciding set, but allowed his advantage to slip away. This instance was arguably even more of a collapse than the similar defeat we saw in Beijing in late September, because he had two chances to serve for the match this time rather than just one.

“I don’t remember finishing a match like that before,” said a vacant-eyed Murray as he stood outside the player lounge in Paris, leaning on a nearby pot-plant and physically shaking with frustration.

“I’m not really enjoying it just now,” he admitted. “Just in terms of how I feel on the court and how I’m playing. For the last five, six months, there’s not really been much positivity there.

“When I play a good point, I’m not really getting behind myself. And then in the important moments, that will to win and fight that has always been a big, big part of my game …” He didn’t complete the sentence, but clearly his mental game has lost its edge.

With respect to his recent struggles in closing out victories, Murray added “Those sorts of situations have happened quite a lot this year, and that’s not really me.”

So is that delicate balance of effort and reward now tilting the wrong way? Is Murray finding that the sacrifices he has to put in, as a 36-year-old with a metal hip, are no longer paying off in satisfaction?

“The last few months it’s been more like that,” he admitted. “I hadn’t really felt like that up until the last few months. I have found the matches frustrating, the competition not as enjoyable as it should be. And then in practice there’s just a lot of frustration there with my game. I’m spending a lot of time focusing on myself and how I’m feeling and how my shots are and just getting extremely frustrated with that. It’s not a great place to be on the court.”

So what’s next for the man often described as Britain’s greatest athlete? Murray has entered the ATP 250 event in Metz next week, which sits on the lowest level of the tour pyramid, but he sounded less than sure about attending.

Then it will be on to Malaga in three weeks’ time for Great Britain’s Davis Cup quarter-final against Serbia – a match they must be second-favourites to win, now that Dan Evans has suffered a season-ending calf tear. Even after the indifferent form that has seen Murray lose five of his last six matches, he is still very much required for that appointment.

Murray’s own judgement of Monday’s defeat was that he didn’t play well enough. In particular, he wasn’t picking up regular cheap points on his serve, despite the fast indoor conditions. And yet he still managed to put himself in a dominant position against the world No13 – an achievement which must count for something.

The trouble is that Murray is building up the mental equivalent of scar tissue, especially against this opponent. He has now played de Minaur six times in all, four of them this season, without collecting a single victory.

As soon as Murray dropped serve for the first time to move to 5-3 up, there was a sense of impending doom. He managed to bring up a match point in his next service game, which came at 5-4, but played a cagy rally and then shanked a forehand long. His nerves were clearly wound as tight as violin strings, and the fact that he had already been the victim of a similar de Minaur comeback in Beijing a month ago must have weighed heavily on his mind.

“To be fair to him he didn’t miss any returns,” said Murray. “He gave me no free points and then I didn’t come up with enough good shots when it mattered and then he started playing better. When he went behind in the third set, he definitely started being more aggressive, putting me on the back foot a bit more of that.”

Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, the British No1 Katie Boulter – who is also de Minaur’s girlfriend – said “Had enough Alex and Andy for the rest of my life. No more please and thank you.”

However sick Murray might have been feeling about his 7-6, 4-6, 7-5 loss, he didn’t behave quite as tempestuously as he did in Beijing, where he repeatedly tossed his racket onto the ground and pushed past a cameraman on his way off the court.

There was just the one smashed racket at the end of this one, and that only arrived after the final point had been played. Murray’s fury drew a few scattered boos from the Parisian fans, even though he had generally enjoyed the lion’s share of crowd support.

The mangled frame served as a visual metaphor for his fading career. Even though Murray managed to break back into the world’s top 40 in August, his progress has stalled again, and he has not been able to secure his longed-for place among the 32 seeded players at the majors.

Still, while Murray might say that he’s losing his enthusiasm for tennis, he remains as stubborn as a Staffordshire bull terrier. When asked whether he planned to rethink his support team, he didn’t sound like a man who is ready to quit.

“Most of what I put out on the court is my responsibility,” he said. “I’m 36 years old now, and have the team around me that I’ve chosen, The results are ultimately my performance. But also if I want to keep going, I’m going to need a lot of work.

“I’m still training hard, I’m practising hard, I’m doing all the work in the gym and everything. I’ve just not been improving in the areas that I feel like I need to. Lots of the guys are serving big, getting a lot of free points and it used to be something I could rely on quite a lot. And I’m not doing that now. Something like that, I’m going to need a lot of work with my team.”