Andy Murray has accused Grand Slams of staging late-night matches for the money as he called on Wimbledon to start matches earlier. “You don’t see it in other sports so it’s clearly wrong,” stated the Scot.
The three-time Major champion won a match at the Australian Open in January at 4.05am in the morning – and then had his Wimbledon defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas interrupted by the 11pm curfew when he had been leading.
And world No.1 Carlos Alcaraz beat Jannick Sinner in the latest-ever finish at the US Open last year at 2.50am on his way to the title. Grand Slams are increasingly staging matches later to attract bigger TV audiences in prime time.
But Murray said: “It’s just not good for anyone. Often when the players complain about that stuff, you sort of hear like: ‘Oh, shut up and get on with it.’ Like, you know: ‘Try working, I don’t know, in a warehouse from nine to five.’
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“And I do get that. I know I’m fortunate to be playing tennis. Tennis is also partly entertainment. I don’t think it helps the sport that much when everyone’s leaving because they have to go and get public transport home and you finish a match like that in front of like 10% of the crowd. You don’t see it in other sports so it’s clearly wrong.
“And the reason for it is purely financial. It’s not because the people that are running the events believe that it’s good for the sport. It’s a financial reason for why they’re doing it. And yeah, they could solve it if they want to start at 7:30, if they want to play two women’s matches, that time is fine. Or if they want to play a men’s match, then you can only play one match unless you’re going to start sooner.
“Wimbledon, they obviously need to change the start times of the matches and move it sooner. Stop having the 20 minute breaks between the matches. And I think that then becomes fair on the players because you can’t really expect someone to recover if you finish your match at 4:30 in the morning.
Murray declared himself fit to face French world No.71 Corentin Moutet on Tuesday after pulling out of the Canadian Masters – and then missing Cincinnati – with an abdominal strain.
“I had a small tear which is healing and the last five or six days of practice have been really good, I have not had any issues serving,” he reported. “It is just obviously that you don’t take a week off from serving then go full into it. You need to build up a little bit. It has not been perfect in that sense but my ab has been ok.”
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