Murray, Nadal Unsure About Players’ Talks at BetLM

Murray, Nadal Unsure About Players’ Talks

Updated Oct 11, 2011 8:51 PM ET

SHANGHAI

Just weeks after rais­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of a strike in protest at the crowded ten­nis cal­en­dar, Andy Mur­ray and Rafael Nadal acknowl­edged Tues­day that bring­ing the top play­ers together to for­mu­late a plan might be difficult.

Mur­ray last month said a meet­ing would likely take place dur­ing this week’s Shang­hai Mas­ters, but the with­drawals of Roger Fed­erer and Novak Djokovic seem to have put paid to that.

The No. 4-ranked Mur­ray said Tues­day that coor­di­nat­ing play­ers’ sched­ules wasn’t easy.

”Whether it hap­pens or not, it’s quite a tough thing to do because there’s a lot of play­ers to coor­di­nate and some­times guys don’t go to the same tour­na­ments,” Mur­ray said.

”Ten­nis play­ers aren’t always the eas­i­est peo­ple to get hold of when they’re not at tournaments.”

Nadal said the tim­ing wasn’t right to have a dis­cus­sion about a pos­si­ble next step.

”There is some­thing there, but is not the right moment to talk about it,” he said Tues­day. ”Always is bet­ter talk about the things when you know exactly what’s going to hap­pen and when you know exactly what we are going to do.”

Mur­ray, Nadal and Andy Rod­dick have been among the most vocal in urg­ing changes to the packed ten­nis cal­en­dar and the num­ber of events the top play­ers are required to enter each year.

Last Novem­ber, the ATP decided to extend the ten­nis off­sea­son from five to seven weeks in response to years of com­plaints from play­ers about the length of the sea­son and the toll it takes on their bodies.

But other issues came to a head dur­ing the rain-soaked US Open, when Nadal, Mur­ray and Rod­dick voiced con­cerns about the con­di­tions of the courts and the sched­ule that forced Nadal to play three matches in three days.

Since then, Rod­dick has pushed for the cre­ation of a play­ers’ union sim­i­lar to those in other major pro sports that could act on play­ers’ behalf in nego­ti­a­tions with ATP officials.

After his second-round win on Tues­day, Rod­dick said that Fed­erer and Djokovic need to be involved in any dis­cus­sion that takes place, but he also expected it would hap­pen before year’s end.

”You know, at this point I think the main thing is a voice. Whether one’s play­ing the sched­ule, we should have some­thing to say about it. At a cer­tain point, how long is too long of not get­ting that point across?” he said. ”It needs to be more than con­ver­sa­tion and more than talk. We’ll see if the time is now.”

Mur­ray was quoted by the BBC last month say­ing that a strike was a ”pos­si­bil­ity,” but he appeared to be in more rec­on­cil­ia­tory mood on Tues­day when he said that nei­ther he nor any of the play­ers he had spo­ken to wanted that outcome.

”It’s so far away from being at that level. The play­ers haven’t even sat down and spoke,” he said.

Mur­ray also stressed that the play­ers only wanted a min­i­mal change to the calendar.

”It’s just a mat­ter of one or two less manda­tory events dur­ing the year. That’s it,” Mur­ray said. ”Doesn’t really need to be a huge change in the cal­en­dar or huge change within ten­nis or the rank­ings or any­thing like that.

”It’s just very small things that seem so dif­fi­cult to get done. I think some­times the play­ers find it dif­fi­cult to under­stand why that is.”

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