Andy Murray says that players need to be mindful of how they communicate with match officials. Murray’s second-round opponent at Indian Wells, Andrey Rublev, was defaulted from his semi-final against Alexander Bublik in Dubai last week for shouting at a line judge. Murray believes players “could probably do a better job with it in tennis”, and said rugby can be a “great” example.
Andy Murray says that players need to be “careful” about how they speak to match officials.
The former British No. 1 takes on world No. 5 Andrey Rublev in the second round at Indian Wells on Friday.
Rublev was disqualified at the Dubai Tennis Championships last week for unsportsmanlike conduct after he shouted in the face of a line judge in the final set of his semi-final against Alexander Bublik.
According to a Russian-speaking official, Rublev swore in his native language at the line judge.
Rublev denies he spoke Russian and won his appeal against losing the week’s ranking points and prize money. However, he still had to pay a £28,700 code violation fine.
In 2022, Alexander Zverev was disqualified from the Mexican Open after striking the umpire’s chair several times with his racquet and was given a suspended eight-week ban.
Andy Murray says that players could do a “better job” of how they speak to officials.
“All of us players – and I think I’ve been guilty of it myself – we need to be a little bit careful of the way that we speak to officials and treat officials,” he said.
“There’s a huge difference between rugby and football – rugby is a great example for how to deal with it. Officials are dealt with respectfully and we could probably do a better job with it in tennis as well.
“At the end of the day, we as players shouldn’t be doing that. We are the one in the wrong – not the official.”
He added: “I understand that in the heat of battle sometimes things happen, but I think over the last four or five years there have been a number of instances where lines have probably been crossed – and maybe not enough has been done about it.
“So I think we all probably have to have a bit of a look at ourselves and go ‘is this really the way we want to be dealing with officials or bad line calls?'”
Murray moved into the second round at Indian Wells after a 6-3 6-2 win over Belgium’s David Goffin in his opening match.
