Andy Murray calls his cycling comments a mistake

ANDY Murray may not have made much impact at the Paris Masters with his tennis last week, but the Scot did cause a stir with his comments about cycling and drug-testing in sport.

After the Scot suggested there was “very little skill involved in the Tour de France” he took to Twitter to explain himself in the face of criticism from cycling fans. The 25-year-old has plenty of experience of remarks being interpreted in a different way to what he intended, notably with a joke he made about the England football team in 2006. Murray, who faces Tomas Berdych in London today in his opening match at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, said: “What happened in cycling is pretty shocking and you just want to make sure you can completely rule anything like that out in your own sport, because I love tennis, so you’d hate for anything like that to happen. A lot of things you can say may come across the wrong way. It’s not always easy when you’re in a room filled with people and you get asked a question you have to answer straight away.

“One or two words can make something you meant in the right way come across badly. I try my best to not make any silly comments or say anything jokingly that may be taken out of context. It’s unfortunate it comes across that way sometimes. I’ll just try better to not make any more mistakes like that.”

Murray will also focus on winning the final point in his matches this week after developing an unwelcome habit since becoming a grand slam champion in New York two months ago. The Scot has played in three tournaments since winning the US Open – in Tokyo, Shanghai and Paris – and in all of them he has held match points in clashes he went on to lose.

“I’m aware how hard it is to finish matches off. It’s not easy to do,” said Murray. “This week I’ll make sure I play one point at a time, take my time and fight for every single point. I need to try to do a better job of that.”