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Andy Murray believes players need to be more careful about how they speak to officials and that tennis could learn a lot from rugby about the issue.
Murray’s second-round opponent at Indian Wells on Friday is Andrey Rublev, who was disqualified in Dubai last week for unsportsmanlike conduct.
The world number five screamed in the face of a line judge following a disputed call in the final set of his semi-final with Alexander Bublik.
“All of us players – and I think I’ve been guilty of it myself – we need to be a little bit careful of the way that we speak to officials and treat officials,” Murray said.
“There’s a huge difference between rugby and football – rugby is a great example for how to deal with it. Officials are dealt with respectfully and we could probably do a better job with it in tennis as well.
“At the end of the day, we as players shouldn’t be doing that. We are the one in the wrong – not the official.”
Rublev was defaulted after a Russian-speaking official told ATP supervisor Roland Herfel that the 26-year-old had sworn at the line judge in Russian.
Rublev denied he had been speaking Russian, and subsequently won his appeal against losing his ranking points and prize money for the week. An ATP committee decided the penalty would be “disproportionate in this case”.
Rublev’s fine of $36,400 (£28,700) for the code violation remains in place despite the appeal. In a post on social media, he promised to learn from the experience and “try to be a better player and better person,” but did not apologise for his behaviour.
Another recent high profile case was Alexander Zverev’s disqualification from the 2022 Mexican Open.
The German player angrily struck the umpire’s chair several times – once narrowly missing the official’s foot – at the end of a doubles match and was given a suspended eight week ban.
“I understand that in the heat of battle sometimes things happen, but I think over the last four or five years there have been a number of instances where lines have probably been crossed – and maybe not enough has been done about it,” Murray continued.
“So I think we all probably have to have a bit of a look at ourselves and go ‘is this really the way we want to be dealing with officials or bad line calls?'”
Murray faces Rublev not before 20:30 GMT in California.
