Andy Murray hits back at Italian fans for booing him at Italian Open 2023

Andy Murray has expressed his disappointment with the spectators present at his match against home favorite Fabio Fognini at the 2023 Italian Open on Wednesday. During the match, Murray lost his cool and confronted the chair umpire for calling a ball in when it was out, resulting in the fans booing the Brit.

In a contest that lasted two hours and 54 minutes, wildcard Fognini beat Murray, the 2016 Rome champion, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 to reach the second round. The 35-year-old Italian hit 47 winners and 22 unforced errors, compared to 27 winners and 18 unforced errors from his opponent.

Murray has won matches in the deciding set on nine occasions in 2023; this was his first defeat after going the distance this season. During the eighth game of the first set, chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani called the ball in when a shot from Fognini landed just outside the line, as Hawkeye showed. But since Hawkeye is not used in clay-court tournaments, the umpire did not change his decision.

"How can you see that ball from there being in? How is it possible," Murray asked Lahyani. "You can see the clay is still there. You can see the ball mark. You know you've got that wrong."

The point gave Fognini a 5-3 lead and turned the Italian crowd against Murray. Reacting to a social media post about the incident later, Murray suggested that the fans were wrong in booing him because of the chair umpire's fault.

"Stadium full of Italians booing and whistling, thinking I'm trying to cheat Fabio out of point all because Mo [Mohamed Lahyani] couldn't read a mark properly. Cheers mate," Andy Murray wrote on Instagram.

Murray has crashed out of the last four Masters 1000 tournaments in the first round - Miami, Monte-Carlo, Madrid, and now Rome. Fognini now leads 5-4 head-to-head against the three-time Grand Slam champion.

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Andy Murray yet to decide on French Open 2023

Andy Murray

After losing in the first round of the 2023 Italian Open, Andy Murray remarked that he was yet to make a decision on whether to go to Paris for the 2023 French Open. He is torn between that and focusing on the grass-court swing and the Wimbledon Championships.

“I’d still like to play but we did agree that we’d talk and make a decision as a team after Rome,” he said. “That is what I wanted, to see how my game felt, how I was playing, and physically how I was doing in some of the longer matches before making a definitive call on it. We’ll have those discussions in the next few days.”

Murray won the Challenger 175 title in Aix-en-Provence in France last week to reach No. 42 in the ATP rankings, his highest in five years.