{"id":353350,"date":"2017-06-29T18:22:03","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/atp-must-look-beyond-the-big-four-says-murray\/"},"modified":"2017-06-29T18:22:03","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:22:03","slug":"atp-must-look-beyond-the-big-four-says-murray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/atp-must-look-beyond-the-big-four-says-murray\/","title":{"rendered":"ATP must look beyond the ‘big four’, says Murray"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The 31-year-old Scot, who won the Queen’s Club doubles title with Brazilian Bruno Soares, said the constant focus on the top players was undermining the quality of tennis the rest of the field was capable of producing on the tour.<\/p>\n

The men’s singles field is dominated by Andy Murray<\/a>, Novak Djokovic<\/a>, Roger Federer<\/a> and Rafa Nadal with only five of the last 40 grand slam crowns have eluded the quartet.<\/p>\n

“The ATP have pushed these four guys (Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal<\/a>) which means the problem is that anyone not in the top ten isn’t very good and that’s not true,” Jamie told the Times.<\/p>\n

“Andy lost last week to Jordan Thompson, who (was) 90 in the world, and everyone says it’s the worst loss ever, but the guy winning the US Open golf could be 100th in the world and no one says anything but ‘well played’.<\/p>\n

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\"Jamie<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Jamie Murray of Great Britain partner of Bruno Soares of Brazil serves during the mens doubles semi-final match against Marin Cilic of Croatia and Marcin Matkowski of Poland on day six of the 2017 Aegon Championships at Queens Club on June 24, 2017 in LonGetty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“When people think of tennis they think of the four players at the top of the game. The sport isn\u2019t promoted, the players are — and that will be a problem when these guys stop playing.”<\/p>\n

The top three seeds Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka<\/a> and Milos Raonic<\/a> made early exits at the Queen’s Club last week but Jamie believes the tournament still had players in the draw that produced quality tennis for the rest of the week.<\/p>\n

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\"Jamie<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Jamie Murray of Great Britain and partner Bruno Soares of BrazilGetty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“At the Queen’s, the top three seeds lost on the Tuesday in the first round and everyone was panicking, saying it’s a disaster for the tournament,” he added.<\/p>\n

“But you got an incredible final that was really exciting (the 35-year-old Feliciano Lopez beating Marin Cilic<\/a> in three sets).”<\/p>\n

Jamie and his doubles partner Soares, who also won in Stuttgart earlier this month, hope to win their third grand slam title together at next week’s Wimbledon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 31-year-old Scot, who won the Queen’s Club doubles title with Brazilian Bruno Soares, said the constant focus on the top players was undermining the quality of tennis the rest of the field was capable of producing on the tour. The men’s singles field is dominated by Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":353351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[71,59,70],"class_list":["post-353350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-eurosport","tag-media","tag-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}