Andy Murray staged an epic comeback in the second round of the Australian Open but the match ended in the early hours of the morning, leading to criticism from the former World No 1.
An exhausted Andy Murray still had enough left in the tank to blast officials after an epic five-set match at the Australian Open finished after 4am on Friday, well beyond the usual Grand Slam midnight madness.
As fans trudged home for a few hours sleep after watching Murray rally from two sets and 2-5 down to beat Thanasi Kokkinakis 4-6, 6-7(4), 7-6(5), 6-3, 7-5, the fired-up Scot labelled organisers “disrespectful.”
Murray said he respected the rules but criticised having to play until the early hours of the morning “and you’re not allowed to go and take a piss”.
“It’s a joke, it’s a joke. You know it as well,” he added.
“It’s disrespectful to you, disrespectful to the ball children, disrespectful to the players and we are not allowed to go to the toilet.
“Ridiculous!”
The Australian Open routinely has matches run past midnight but former Grand Slam champion John McEnroe called on officials to implement rules so it never happens so late again.
“I am stunned in disbelief that they were still playing at that hour,” McEnroe told Eurosport. “For starters, it was insane that matches at that level are played 4 to 4:30am in the morning.”
Tournament director Craig Tiley, though, said there was no need to tinker with the schedule at this point.
“At this point, we’ve got to fit those matches in the 14 days, so you don’t have many options,” he told Channel Nine.
“It was an epic match and when you schedule a match like that just before 10pm in the evening before, you’re not expecting it to go close to six hours.”
Tiley pointed out that several hours had been lost due to delays caused by extreme heat and rain this week.
“You don’t often get those conditions in such a short period of time so we’ve had three late nights with scheduling trying to catch up with matches,” Tiley added.
Most elite sports do not hold their biggest events into the wee hours of the morning after most fans have gone to bed, although late matches in Australia are daytime viewing in the big European TV markets.
The latest finish for a match at the Australian Open was 4.34am in 2008, when local Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis battled it out in a ...