Andy Murray has put his foot down on late-night tennis finishes after playing a losing British Davis Cup doubles match in Glasgow which did not end until early Thursday morning.
The 35-year-old Scot who was making a rare appearance in the country of his birth went down alongside Joe Salisbury 5-7 6-4 7-5 to Rajeev Ram and Jack Sock as the American opposition won the opening tie.
The World Group playoff series is seemingly plagued by the poor scheduling which resulted in Carlos Alcaraz playing until nearly 3 am last week at the US Open in another post-midnight epic finish.
Murray says some order needs to be restored to the sport in order not to burn out players and audiences.
“There’s probably half of the people in there at the end of the match that were there at the beginning,” Murray told local media.
“It’s a bit of a shame because, well, they missed a great match.
“It’s not probably because they didn’t want to stay. If you’ve got children here, you can’t stay with them. (If) you’ve got to get a bus or train home, (you) can’t do it.”
So far this week in Scotland play has extended past midnight on both days of play.
Murray doesn’t like the look of the entire scheduling process throughout the sport.
“We’ve seen it obviously at the US Open even just last week,” he added. “It’s something that tennis needs to sort of have a bit of a think about. I don’t think it looks that professional.”
The winning US side will now have to recover for a Thursday tie against Kazakhstan.
