The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Murray’s ‘jinxed’ grandmother banned!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 03, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Murray’s ‘jinxed’ grandmother banned!

LONDON: Andy Murray’s grandmother has been banned from the guest box at Wimbledon — by her own daughter.

Judy Murray is worried that her mom, Shirley Erskine, will jinx Andy, who is trying to become the first British man since Fred Perry in 1936 to win the tournament.

Murray lost his last three matches attended by his grandmother — each time on his birthday.

“She is clearly a jinx and I’m not taking her again,” Judy Murray told the Daily Express.

Murray reached his first Wimbledon semifinal on Wednesday without Erskine at Centre Court.

However, grandma is still hoping to be let in for the next match against Andy Roddick.

“I’m trying to convince the family I’m not a jinx, because I want to be down there cheering Andy on,” Erskine said.

“If I could do anything to bring Andy good luck, I would.”

Missing miss

The traditional use of the prefix Miss or Mrs. before women’s names on the Wimbledon scoreboards has been scrapped this year.

Wimbledon organisers decided to put the full name of female players on the scoreboards — like they do with the men — in yet another step by the All England Club to modernise the tournament. For the last 132 years, the prefix has always been used for the women.

However, umpires still refer to the players as Miss or Mrs. during matches.

Juan Carlos Ferrero doesn’t have a lot of time to savour his surprising run to the Wimbledon quarterfinals, instead going from the All England Club to Umag, Croatia, in search of some valuable ranking points.

The former No. 1 entered Wimbledon as a wild card after his ranking fell to 115th in May, but still won four matches before losing to Andy Murray 7-5, 6-3, 6-2 and this has propelled him into the top 40 again.

After a few days at home in Spain, Ferrero will return to his preferred clay surface next week hoping to climb a few more spots in order to earn direct entry to the major tournaments.

“There are lots of points in Umag,” Ferrero said.

“It’s important for me.”

A better ranking may also see him return to Spain’s Davis Cup team.

If Ferrero keeps playing the way he did at Wimbledon, he could be back in the team soon.

“I’m happy about the way I played today also,” he said.

“(I) only want to play like this all the time in the next tournaments, and be a little bit more regular than I was.” — AP

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport