Jamie Murray announces new Battle of the Brits tennis event for leading men and women

Britain’s latest tournament impresario Jamie Murray announced a new event on Thursday afternoon – Battle of the Brits Team Tennis – while questioning the communication around next month’s planned resumption of the official men’s tour in the USA.

It is now three weeks since the US Open confirmed that it planned to go ahead on its original dates, starting on Aug 31. At that time, the number of Covid-19 cases being reported in the New York area had dipped encouragingly. But they have not dwindled away completely, and there are numerous new hotspots flaring up across America.

Both Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have made recent comments which suggest that they are unlikely to attend the US Open, while Roger Federer has ruled himself out for the rest of the 2020 season after undergoing a second keyhole operation on his troublesome right knee.

As for the elder Murray, he was asked whether he would consider staying in Europe to play the two scheduled clay-court Masters events – Madrid and Rome – before the postponed French Open is due to start on Sept 27. He replied: “It seems like a less stressful option right now.

“It seems they have regressed in the States,” Murray added, “and there are a lot more cases coming up again. I mean, you cannot even book a flight to New York just now. You have to fly through somewhere else.

“For me, it would be really nice to say, ‘Okay, on this day, tournaments are starting, these are the conditions we are playing under.’ But the US Open has changed their conditions quite a lot.

“It’s understandable as it’s a fluid situation and things can change all the time. But we are obviously hoping for better. There have been a lot of things changing with not that fantastic communication, I’d say.”

Murray has already scored a significant success with his men-only Battle of the Brits, which finished 11 days ago when Dan Evans beat Kyle Edmund to claim the singles prize. Now he plans to assemble 12 men and 12 women, split into two mixed-sex teams, for a second tournament at Roehampton’s National Tennis Centre, to be played behind closed doors from July 27 to Aug 2.

Asked about the plans of Britain’s two highest-profile players – his brother Andy Murray and the former Wimbledon semi-finalist Johanna Konta – Jamie Murray replied: “They both said they like the idea and intend to play as long as fitness is there. I need our top players intending to play in order to put these events on. Otherwise it doesn’t work.

“Unless people were talking s--- to me, everyone seemed to enjoy it and have a good time,” added the elder Murray, with regard to his first event. “It was a lot of fun. I watched a lot of matches on TV, and you weren’t thinking, ‘This is rubbish as there is no-one there watching.’ We had extra stuff like the coach communicating with the commentators, and the players as well. I thought it added to the whole event.”