Andy Murray suggests players should be required to take vaccine

Former world No. 1 Andy Murray has revealed that he would play the Australian Open even if there were no tournaments leading up to the first Grand Slam of the season and suggested that slightly postponing the Major could be the best option at the tournament.

The Australian Open organizers suffered a major hit last week when the government announced players would not be allowed to enter the country in December.

"Who knows what’s going to happen? Kind of been getting mixed messages," Murray said, per Metro UK. "Stuff’s been changing every day, so it’s obviously difficult to know what the situation is going to be in a month’s time. It’s obviously tricky for the players.

"Originally, we planned to go on the 12th or the 13th of December to arrive around the 15th. Then that changed and the kind of latest I’ve heard is that they’ve planned to push it back a couple of weeks, not right up until Indian Wells/Miami time, which is what I think has been suggested by some people.

"I don’t think that would work for the sport. They’re two huge tournaments in March. I think that would be the best case scenario now if they [put] it back a couple of weeks.

"That would allow the players to get over there at the beginning of January and prepare properly for the event. I’ll go as soon as I can."

Murray says all players should get a vaccine 

"Good question. Yeah, I think probably should be the case," Murray said, when asked should the governing bodies of tennis insist on players to be vaccinated in order to be allowed to compete at tournaments. "I would hope that all the players would be willing to do that for the good of the sport – providing everything has proved to be safe, clinical trials and everything have been done and there are not any significant side effects.

"I guess we’re not going to know the long-term effects potentially for a while. But, from what I’ve been hearing on the TV and on the news, is that there shouldn’t really be any long-term effects. So I would hope, providing all the clinical trials and everything have been done, that the players would all be willing to do that."

The tennis season was suspended on March 12 but it restarted in late-July and the scheduled tournaments for the season-restart were held.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/368mhoF