Andy Murray fumes over excessively long bathroom break by opponent Stefanos Tsitsipas at US Open
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Murray said the issue isn’t taking the breaks but the amount of time Tsitsipas was off the court, which allowed his body to cool down and stiffen up before going right back into the match. He could be heard on the court saying that Tsitsipas was cheating by taking so long.
“He knows. The other players know. The fact that I was talking to my team about it before the match, we knew it was coming,” Murray said. “You could argue that I shouldn’t let that affect me. But genuinely it is difficult, like, when you’re playing such a brutal match in those conditions to have those breaks. Physically you can’t stop that from affecting you. Mentally, yes, but physically you can’t.”
Using bathroom breaks and unnecessary medical timeouts as a tactical ploy has long been a topic on tour, but it’s unclear what the tennis tours should do about it because there are obviously situations where players need to leave the court and either get treatment, use the restroom or quickly change into dry clothes.
“If people don’t care enough about it to change, then that’s fine,” Murray said. “I’ll speak to my team about it. I’ll listen to what, I don’t know, fans, players, and everything are saying about it. Maybe I’m being unreasonable. Maybe I’m overreacting to something because I lost the match. But, yeah, right now sitting here I feel like it’s nonsense and they need to make a change because it’s not good for the sport, it’s not good for TV, it’s not good for fans.