{"id":54920,"date":"2025-04-27T14:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T14:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/54920\/"},"modified":"2025-04-27T14:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T14:05:07","slug":"andy-murray-tells-tennis-stars-you-dont-have-to-play-as-retired-brit-wades-into-debate-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/54920\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Murray tells tennis stars ‘you don’t have to play’ as retired Brit wades into debate | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Murray<\/a> has suggested that the new, extended two-week Masters 1000 format is worse than the former one-week product. The three-time Grand Slam champion ended his career at last year\u2019s Olympic Games, but he still travels to some tournaments on the tennis tour as Novak Djokovic<\/a>\u2019s coach. And he believes the longer events are becoming unsustainable.<\/p>\n

The two-week Masters tournaments have been a contentious talking point over the last couple of years, with plenty of players – including Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> and Stefanos Tsitsipas<\/a> – admitting they preferred when the premier competitions were staged over a shorter time period. Murray has now reminded current stars that they \u201cdon\u2019t have to play\u201d if they find it too demanding.<\/p>\n

Murray sees several disadvantages with the longer events, including fewer quality matches and less time for players to recover.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes, before, if you played in Rome and Madrid and you were seeded, you had a bye in those events,\u201d he told Tennis Majors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so you could play your first match on Wednesday, so you could arrive on, let\u2019s say the Saturday of Madrid, know that you would have four days of practice and within 16 days, you\u2019ve finished two events, whereas now there\u2019s nothing like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s changed, I think, in that respect, and I think the other way was much better.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one-week events were really good. You had great quality matches every single day; you knew exactly who was going to be playing when.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who defend the two-week format often cite the extra rest day players get between matches, similar to a Grand Slam competition.<\/p>\n

But Murray pointed out that the athletes still had to practice on their days off – and had to do so under the watchful eye of fans and cameras around the tournament grounds.<\/p>\n

Players who withdrew from the top tournaments on the ATP circuit can be penalised, including having some points on their ranking taken away and being excluded from a bonus payment pool.<\/p>\n

However, the retired Brit has already encouraged some players and coaches to make the right decisions for themselves and take the hit if needed, claiming it wasn’t a \u201cbig deal\u201d.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cYou also always have the choice not to play. Yes, you might get a zero point, lose a few ranking points, or not be part of a bonus pool. Players have the option not to play if they don\u2019t want to. It\u2019s not like anything really bad happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the two-time Olympic champion thinks some will start taking his advice.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cPlayers often complain and say, \u2018Oh, the season\u2019s very long, so when I play in Canada and Cincinnati, I\u2019m tired when I get to the US Open\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, then, if you think it would be an advantage not to play Cincinnati and Canada, choose one of the events you don\u2019t want to play and then go into the US Open with an advantage over all of the other players.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s truly what you believe, that it is better\u2026nowadays, every tournament is just adding days, and it\u2019s like the least creative way of making them more money, I don\u2019t know, really\u2026 But also, if it wasn\u2019t making them money, I think they\u2019d find a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Murray has suggested that the new, extended two-week Masters 1000 format is worse than the former one-week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[5233,29169,79,1068,5838,11910,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-54920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-andy-murray","9":"tag-andy-murray-news","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-tennis-news","13":"tag-tennis-schedule","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114410312489216731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}