The ATP have decided to make Andy Murray count 0 points from Indianapolis last week as punishment for his withdrawal from the tournament. Apparently 'fatigue' was not a good enough excuse.

Right now I am so furious with the ATP, the rules state a competitor must have pulled out TWICE in 12 months without a reasonable excuse.

If so could they please tell us when the other time is.


There are a lot of words I am using to describe them now-none of them pretty :angry: :angry:


This could stop Murray from reaching Shanghai. Something that was pretty assured two weeks ago.

That sounds harsh, can he appeal? I thought they were clamping down on withdrawls from next season.

Harsh indeed, the punishment far exceeds the weight of the 'crime'

I don't know about an appeal. :shrug:

I'm sure that he as someone in his team who can deal with this.

Let's face it, he's not exactly some middle-ranked player without the resources to do something about this.

Oh well, s**t happens :lol:

It is harsh, but i guess the ATP just find the excuse 'fatigue' far too disposable these days :shrug:

Not saying i agree with it it, but that's the way it is. They need to get rid of that corporate climber De villiers before we can rationally sort out the ATPs problem's :rolleyes:

I can understand them punishing Indy. But a player has to do it twice in 12 months to be punished.

Murray hasn't done this in the last 12 months so I'm really quite pissed off with them.

I'm debating whether to send a complaint.

I wonder if they would've counted his retirement at Queens as a 'withdrawal' :shrug:

The system is corrupt anyway, everyone knows it :lol:

Sounds ridiculous to me. :rolleyes: I know they need to discourage withdrawls for the wrong reasons (as in can't be bothered to play) but this doesn't solve the problem - Murrays withdrawals seem sensible and genuine to me, plus they are breaking the rules here. :angry:

I'm only aware of Andy having pulled out of two other tournaments in the last 12 months. One was Valencia, with a virus infection, so you wouldn't have thought that would be the second one, the other New Haven, where he had a wild card.

The thing about New Haven is that he pulled out, according to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/mai.../stmurr116.xml, because he did not feel ready to compete, in the sense that while his wrist was technically no longer injured, he wasn't able to hit the ball properly.

I'm sure plenty of other players would have claimed to have re-injured their wrist, so maybe Andy is effectively being penalised here for being too honest where other players might be more pragmatic, in which case the rule we are talking about is a bit counter-productive.

These penalties actually happen more frequently than you would think. Other players who have been forced to count zero-pointers for late withdrawals from non-mandatory events in the last 12 months are:

Mumbai - Guillermo Garcia-Lopez
Basel - Juan Carlos Ferrero
Houston - Hyung-Taik Lee & Sebastien Grosjean
Valencia - Stefan Koubek
Munich - Sebastien Grosjean
Queens Club - Juan Martin del Potro

Three players have had penalties like this overturned on appeal in the last year and a half - Jonas Bjorkman (Rotterdam 2007), Paradorn Srichaphan (Barcelona 2007) and Fabio Fognini (Estoril 2008), but I don't know what made those cases different from the ones where the penalties stood.