Murray hits out at wearing tennis calendar

 

Originally published on: 19/09/11 10:42

After helping Great Britain climb back into Group Two of the Davis Cup after defeating Hungary 5-0, Andy Murray promptly hit out at the relentless tennis calendar.

The 24-year-old Scot played a dead rubber at the Braehaed Arena after teammates Colin Fleming and Ross Hutchins had already wrapped up victory for the host nation, and admitted that he was physically drained afterwards.

“I’m tired and my body’s hurting,” said the Scot. “When you’ve already won it’s, in a way, like a glorified practice match because you don’t get anything extra for winning and right now I need to rest.”

Murray heads to Bangkok next week for the Thailand Open and the world No.4 was critical of the amount of mandatory tournaments the players must compete in. In addition to the four Grand Slams and eight Masters 1000 events, the players must play four more tournaments and will lose ranking points if they play fewer than 18 events over the course of a year.

“The mandatory events is the worst thing,” said Murray. “All you had to do originally was play in nine Masters Series and four slams, that was 13 events.

“I’m being quite open about it. Some of the smaller events, because the ATP’s messed up the smaller tournaments by giving them 250 points, it doesn’t really make much sense to play in, because 250 points isn’t going to make hardly any difference.

“But you get good guarantees for going so one or two times a year, it’s nice to do that.

“When we play the Masters Series and the slams, we’re playing against the best players in the world every time. Sometimes it’s nice to go to a tournament when you don’t have to kill yourself in every single match. You can gain some confidence from winning matches and maybe winning a tournament.

“The schedule’s messed up and we need to change it.”

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