Martina Navratilova among those to blast Australian Open for scheduling after Murray marathon: "It's crazy, it's not fair"

WTA
Saturday, 21 January 2023 at 20:35
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Martina Navratilova joined other members of the tennis community in criticism of the Australia Open scheduling that saw a match finish at 04:00 local time.
It was a 5-hour match between Murray and Kokkinakis but there was no need for the match to go on that long. There are many ways the situation could have been avoided and she joined the likes of McEnroe and Murray's brother Jaime who criticized the scheduling. Speaking to the tennis channel Navratilova called it unfair:
"We’ve got to do something in our sport about this. No other sport has a finishing time of 4 in the morning and starting perhaps at 11. It’s crazy and it’s not fair. And we need to put some kind of a limit on when the match needs to stop and finish the next day. The guys would have preferred, I think, playing late afternoon the next day."
She added:
"If my child was a ball kid for a tournament, they're coming home at 5 in the morning, as a parent, I'm snapping at that. It's not beneficial for them. It's not beneficial for the umpires, the officials. I don't think it's amazing for the fans. It's not good for the players."

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