"Tennis doesn’t need to change schedule" - Andy Murray's ex-coach explains what the sport can do to avoid too many late night finishes

Andy Murray's former coach and tennis commentator, Mark Petchey, recently took to social media to suggest a solution to the issues arising from poor scheduling on both the ATP and WTA tours. The scheduling controversy was first kicked off by the WTA's poor handling of Elena Rybakina's campaign at the Canadian Open, where a late finish and a rain-plagued semifinal led to severe exhaustion for the Kazakh.

Having played her last-four match in Montreal on August 13, she was subsequently forced to retire mid-match during her third-round match against Jasmine Paolini at this week's Cincinnati Open, which began on August 14.

Canadian Open titlists Jannik Sinner and Jessica Pegula, meanwhile, were also seemingly affected by the lack of break between the two elite tournaments, as they lost against their lower-ranked opponents without much fight.

In that context, Andy Murray's ex-coach offered an alternative solution to the scheduling problem on Friday, August 18. He believes that the shot clock, which imposes a 25-second rule between points, can be modified in order to avoid late matches.

The British coach admitted that cutting down the time between each first serve to 15 seconds can perhaps work as a deterrent to late-night matches, which affected his own former ward Andy Murray earlier this year in Melbourne. He also provided the calculations to back his argument, using data from the second-round match between Andrey Rublev and Emil Ruusuvuori in Cincinnati.

"Tennis doesn’t need to change the schedule but it does need to change its time between points, also known as “dead air,” he said.

"Even, if you allow extra recovery time for the 9 plus points of 30 seconds, of which there were 38 [in the Rublev-Ruusuvuori match], you would have an extra 4 minutes of dead air but overall you would save 22 minutes a match and more in the men’s 5 setters obviously. Cumulatively, over the day, this would have a massive impact in not having so many late nights in tennis," he added

It should be noted, however, that Petchey's solution doesn't consider the fact that allowing only 15 seconds between serves may not allow players to do well in return games, as they will not have much time to recover after points.

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Andy Murray was also hurt by late-night finish against Thanasi Kokkinakis at 2023 Australian Open

36-year-old Andy Murray's Melbourne campaign this year was also marred by long matches and late-night finishes.

The Brit played back-to-back five-setters against Matteo Berrettini and Thanasi Kokkinakis in his first two matches at the Happy Slam this year.

The latter of the two matches, against Kokkinakis, lasted nearly six hours and ended very late, at 4:00 in the night.

Murray consequently had very little in his tank for his third-round encounter against Roberto Bautista Agut, losing to the Spaniard in four comprehensive sets.

Andy Murray has played several long matches on the ATP tour this year

In a similar vein, Andy Murray has been massively hurt by matches that have gone the distance recently.

The former World No. 1, who is way past his physical prime these days, defeated Australia's Max Purcell in Montreal in nearly three hours during his Toronto campaign last week.

That match, however, ended up costing him dearly as he withdrew from his Round-of-16 match against Jannik Sinner. The Brit later withdrew ahead of his Cincinnati opener against Karen Khachanov on Tuesday (August 15), citing an abdominal strain.

Murray is also not in great shape for this year's US Open, as the cumulative wear and tear from his long matches in 2023 could possibly affect his ability to compete at a high level.