Andy Murray claims players ‘need to be careful’ after Andrey Rublev disqualification
Andy Murray has spoken out about Andrey Rublev’s disqualification in Dubai last week, suggesting that players ‘need to be a little bit careful’ in the future.
Rublev was disqualified in his Dubai Tennis Championships semi-final match last week against Alexander Bublik, after the world No.5 shouted in the face of a line judge.
The line judge alleged that Rublev had swore at him in Russian, which is something that the 26-year-old has strongly denied.
Andrey Rublev is defaulted from the Dubai semi-final, sending Alexander Bublik through to the #DDFTennis final pic.twitter.com/tclfcXxDYY
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 1, 2024
Originally this meant that Rublev had lost his $150,000 in prize money and the 200 ranking points earned that week, but this decision was overturned after he appealed.
Murray will play Rublev later today in his second round match at Indian Wells, and the Brit has spoken about how different sports deal with disrespect towards 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.”
The 36-year-old continued, “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.
“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?”
That one feels good ????@andy_murray stays undefeated vs. Goffin, setting up a R2 encounter against Andrey Rublev ????#TennisParadise pic.twitter.com/JlzjANuBjM
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 6, 2024
Murray will take on Rublev later today in the second round of Indian Wells, in a third-time meeting between the pair, with the head-to-head currently sitting at a win apiece.
Inside the baseline…
It is a very sensible point made by Andy Murray, who cleverly did not go into the specific incident and just spoke about the culture between players and officials as a whole. Regardless of what Andrey Rublev said last week, getting in the face of an official the way he did is never acceptable. It will be interesting to see if Murray can play against Rublev as well as he did in the opening round at Indian Wells, as that will probably be the only way that the Brit can make it competitive.
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