Murray serves up a fight

Andy Murray has appeared in many guises in his seven years as a professional – the grand slam finalist, the Davis Cup hero, the thinker, the joker – but never before has he been Andy Murray the Revolutionary. Yet Scotland’s finest is rapidly turning into the Che Guevara of the locker room.

After a chaotic two weeks of rain delays, scheduling disasters and waterlogged courts, the players at the US Open are on the verge of rebellion. Earlier in the week, Murray called for the players to form a union so that their views could be clearly presented to the tournaments and to the governing bodies of the sport; now he is in cahoots with Rafael Nadal to plan the best course of action.

“I spoke to Rafa last night on the phone,” Murray said. “Basically, we spoke about the things that we wanted and the things we want to improve. He’s been on the ATP Tour board for quite a long time so he knows more about those things than me.

“But I think everyone knows now, and understands, that the only way to get things done is that everyone sticks together and between now and the Shanghai Masters [in October] we come up with a list of things we agree are very important. Then we will speak to the other players about it in Asia [during the three-week Asian tour] and have them sign our document, if they agree with it and want to do so.

“Hopefully, that’s the way to get something done. I think now the players are really serious about changing some things whereas in the past, when ideas have been rejected, they have just gone away.”

This was fighting talk from the world No.4. Then again, he had plenty to be angry about. The US Open is the most gruelling of the four major tournaments mainly because television runs the show. No matter that one side of the draw gets more days off than the other, no matter that non-American players get shunted out onto smaller courts at odd hours – television gets what television wants. And when it rains, the whole event is thrown into utter disarray.

The Open prides itself on “Super Saturday”, a ridiculous timetable that has the four men’s semi-finalists playing on the Saturday and then dragging the two finalists back less than 24 hours later to compete for one of the biggest prizes in the game. No other grand slam treats the players with such disdain – they are regarded as little more than performing bears at the circus – and now the players want action. This year, thanks to two days of rain in the second week, the already compressed schedule for the finals weekend has been condensed even further in order to get the tournament finished sometime before Christmas. Murray has not had a day off since the rain delays.

“It feels like we have been here a long time,” Murray said, having beaten John Isner in the quarter finals on Friday afternoon and before he rushed back to his hotel to get some rest before that Super Saturday marathon. “It’s been challenging. I think from next year there will definitely be some changes. It’s been tough for everyone and I don’t think anything like this will happen again.”

Most tennis players are self-centred souls – they have to be in order to survive in an individual sport – but Murray now feels the need to give something back to the industry that has made him a multi-millionaire and a celebrity. A player of his stature ought to have some clout and he hopes that people will now listen to him and Nadal.

“As I have been in the top few places in the world for a few years now there is more of a responsibility towards the tour, and to make sure I am giving tennis a good name,” Murray said. “I want to help and improve things for the future. When I first came on the tour I used to speak with Tim Henman quite a lot and other guys and all I’d hear was ‘tennis is messed up’. They said that everything took so long to push things through. But now there are going to be guys taking more interest in how tennis is run. It’s not just about the top guys, it’s about the whole tour. But when the top guys stick together, and are doing things together, it does lend extra weight.”

And with that Che Guevara was off – he had a grand slam semi-final against Nadal to prepare for. Even revolutionaries have to take care of the day job.