Andy Murray has branded the scheduling at the US Open “a total mess” following record late starts and finishes at Flushing Meadow.
The 2012 champion, who retired from professional tennis after the Olympics last month, hit out as Zheng Qinwen was completing a gruelling fourth-round win over Donna Vekic that did not end until 2.15am local time.
It was the latest ever finish to a women’s match at the US Open and came days after what had been the latest start, when Aryna Sabalenka and Ekaterina Alexandrova did not begin play until eight minutes past midnight and did not finish until almost 2am.
All this is despite organisers having proclaimed before the tournament that they were “defining a policy” to prevent night matches continuing well into the early hours.
Murray wrote on X: “The tennis scheduling situation is a total mess.”
Posting a thumbs down emoji, he added: “It looks so amateurish having matches going on at 2,3 4am. Sort it out.”
In a press conference before the US Open, tournament director Stacey Allaster confirmed plans for referees to be given the option to move matches between courts if it prevented them starting before 11.15pm.
“We’ve had late matches here, we will still have late matches here,” she said. “We are now defining a policy.
“In the event that we have the second match of the evening in Ashe or the last match in Armstrong, if those matches have not gone on by 11.15pm, the referee will have the discretion to move the match. That’s going to depend on many variables, like, ‘Do we have the broadcast team ready, do we have a ball crew’, so forth.”
Sabalenka later revealed she did get the option of moving but decided to see what happened in the fourth set of Novak Djokovic’s third-round defeat to Popyrin.
“They asked us for our opinion,” explained Sabalenka. “They were keeping the staff on the Grandstand so we would have the possibility to move, but there was also a chance of rain. It was tricky, so we were waiting to see how the fourth set [of Djokovic’s match went].”
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