Andy Murray, Emma Raducanu eliminated at Wimbledon

By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer

WIMBLEDON, England — The recurring cries of “Come on, Andy!” at Centre Court meandered somewhere along the continuum from pushing to pleading as two-time champion Andy Murray’s shortest stay at Wimbledon came to a close.

Unable to overcome big John Isner’s big serves, the way he always has in the past, the revered Murray lost in the second round to the 20th-seeded American, 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (3), 6-4, on Wednesday night at the All England Club, capping a disappointing afternoon and evening in the grass-court Grand Slam tournament’s main stadium for the locals.

Prior to Murray vs. Isner, the host country’s other leading player, reigning U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu, was eliminated by Caroline Garcia of France, 6-3, 6-3.

Asked whether he plans to be back a year from now, the 35-year-old Murray replied: “It depends on how I am physically. If physically I feel good, we’ll try to keep playing. But it’s extremely difficult, with the problems I’ve had with my body the last few years, to make predictions.”

Murray needed multiple operations on his hip and now has an artificial joint. He also recently dealt with an abdominal issue that hampered his preparations last week.

In addition to becoming Britain’s first men’s singles title winner in 77 years at Wimbledon when he claimed the trophy in 2013 – and adding another in 2016 – Murray always had managed to make it to at least the third round in his 13 prior appearances. He lost that early twice, in his 2005 debut and in 2021.

“It’s no secret that I am most definitely not a better tennis player than Andy Murray. I might have been just a little bit better than him today. It was an incredible honor to play him on this court, in front of this crowd,” said the 37-year-old Isner, who won the longest match in tennis history by a 70-68 score in the fifth set at Wimbledon in 2010 and reached the semifinals there in 2018. “At the age I’m at now, I need to relish these moments. This was one of the biggest wins of my career.”

Murray can still hit crisp, clean groundstrokes, and he accumulated merely 13 unforced errors to 39 winners against the 6-foot-10 Isner. And Murray can still return about as well as anyone, often getting serves topping 130 mph back over the net. But he could not quite do that enough: Isner hit 36 aces – moving him four away from Ivo Karlovic’s total of 13,728, a record since the ATP began tracking that stat in 1991 – and delivered another 60 unreturned serves across the match’s nearly 3½ hours.

Murray, who entered the day 8-0 against Isner, only managed to obtain two break points. Both came after about a dozen minutes of play, right after Isner broke to go up 2-1 in the opening set.

Isner erased the first with a drop volley winner, part of a tremendous display of deft touch at the net, where he won the point on 43 of 61 trips forward.

“This is why I still play,” Isner said. “This is why I work hard.”

When the second break chance for Murray arrived moments later, Isner got out of the game this way: 128 mph ace, 126 mph ace, 134 mph service winner.

Murray made things interesting by taking the third-set tiebreaker, celebrating by hopping around and shouting and pumping his right fist while the crowd rose and roared.

But Isner quickly broke to go up 3-2 in the fourth and that, essentially, was that.

How did Isner hold off any chance of a comeback by Murray?

“I served,” Isner said with a laugh. “That’s really all it came down to. I guess I didn’t give him many opportunities to spin his web and get me tangled up in it. If I got embroiled in too many rallies with him, it just wasn’t going to go well for me. I had an incredible serving day and I needed every single bit of it to beat him.”

Next for Isner is a third-round matchup against No. 10 seed Jannik Sinner. Other men who won Wednesday included three-time defending champion Novak Djokovic and No. 5 Carlos Alcaraz, while third-seeded Casper Ruud – the runner-up to Rafael Nadal at the French Open – lost, 3-6, 6-2, 7-5, 6-4, to Ugo Humbert, and No. 15 Reilly Opelka was defeated by Tim Van Rijthoven, 6-4, 6-7 (8), 7-6 (7), 7-6 (4).

Only four of the top 11 men in the ATP rankings are in the bracket after Day 3.

In addition to No. 10 Raducanu’s exit, No. 2 Anett Kontaveit lost to Juke Niemeier of Germany, 6-4, 6-0, and No. 9 Garbiñe Muguruza, the champion at Wimbledon in 2017 and the French Open in 2016, was beaten by Greet Minnen, 6-4, 6-0.

Women’s winners included 2021 runner-up Karolina Pliskova, No. 8 Jessica Pegula, three-time major champion Angelique Kerber and 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko. Third-seeded Ons Jabeur beat Katarzyna Kawa to set up a third-round match against Diane Parry of France.

Raducanu won the championship at Flushing Meadows in September as an unseeded player who went through qualifying at age 18.

Since then, she’s had a birthday – and has not made it past the second round at a major.

“There’s no pressure. Like, why is there any pressure? I’m still 19. Like, it’s a joke. I literally won a Slam,” Raducanu said. “Yes, I have had attention. But I’m a Slam champion, so no one’s going to take that away from me. Yeah, if anything, the pressure is on those who haven’t done that.”

Raducanu has dealt with minor injuries recently, including a side strain that forced her to retire from a match at the Nottingham Open two weeks ago. She said she didn’t feel any pain but acknowledged being rusty after playing only “seven hours of tennis in a month.”

“To even compete with these girls at this level and win a round I think is a pretty good achievement,” she said.

Raducanu beat Alison Van Uytvanck, 6-4, 6-4, in the first round – also in the main stadium – but ran into a player on a roll on Wednesday. Garcia, who has been ranked as high as No. 4, extended her winning streak to seven matches, which includes the Bad Homburg title in Germany last week for her first tournament win in three years.

“I struggled to find a way through her today,” Raducanu said. “But it’s OK because coming into this I didn’t really have many expectations of myself. Playing on Centre Court again was, again, a really positive experience for me. So, yeah, I can take it going forwards.”

Forward is Flushing Meadows, where last September she went from qualifier to major champion by beating Canadian teenager Leylah Fernandez, 6-4, 6-3, in the final.

“Going back to New York, it’s going to be cool because I have got a lot of experiences playing on big courts, playing with people in the stadium, playing with the spotlight on you,” Raducanu said. “I don’t mind that. I mean, for me, everything is learning. I’m embracing every single moment that is thrown at me.”

In her Grand Slam debut at the All England Club last year, Raducanu reached the fourth round as a wild-card entry. She followed up her U.S. Open title with second-round exits at the next two Grand Slam tournaments – the Australian Open and the French Open.

Raducanu had beaten Garcia in three sets at Indian Wells this year in their only other head-to-head match.

“Obviously I learn a little bit some stuff when I played against her in the U.S. and tried to learn from my loss and makes things better,” the 28-year-old Frenchwoman said. “It was different surface today, so it’s very different.”

It’s also easier now to prepare for Raducanu, Garcia said, compared to a year ago when “pretty much no one knew her.”

MATCH ENDS ON BALL-ABUSE POINT PENALTY

Alejandro Davidovich Fokina found an unusual way to lose a Grand Slam match. So unusual, he didn’t quite know the rule that did him in.

Spain’s Davidovich Fokina was given a point penalty by chair umpire Carlos Ramos for ball abuse and, because it came on match point, that ended the second-round contest against the Czech Republic’s Jiri Vesely.

The final score was 6-3, 5-7, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 7-6 (10-7) in Vesely’s favor after nearly four hours of play at Court 17.

Davidovich Fokina had been cited for a different code violation earlier. When Ramos made the match-ending call, Davidovich Fokina questioned the ruling, saying his two citations were for different infractions.

But that doesn’t matter: Two such violations during one match result in a point being awarded to the opponent. This one happened to come right after Davidovich Fokina missed a forehand to give Vesely a 9-7 edge in the first-to-10-points, win-by-two final-set tiebreaker.

So Davidovich Fokina, who eliminated No. 7 seed Hubert Hurkacz in another fifth-set tiebreaker in the first round Monday, is out of the men’s singles draw at Wimbledon.

Vesely moves on to face 30th-seeded American Tommy Paul in the third round.

TAN ANGERS DOUBLES PARTNER BY WITHDRAWING

A day after eliminating 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams in her Wimbledon debut, Harmony Tan surprised and angered her doubles partner by withdrawing from that tournament with a thigh injury.

Tan, a Frenchwoman ranked 115th who beat the seven-time Wimbledon singles champion, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7), on Centre Court on Tuesday, was scheduled to team with Tamara Korpatsch for their opening doubles match on Wednesday.

“She just texted this morning. Let me wait here 1 hour before the match start,” Korpatsch wrote in an Instagram post. “I’m very sad, disappointed and also very angry that I can’t play my 1st Doubles Grand Slam.

“And it’s really not fair for me … I didn’t deserve that.”

Tan is scheduled to play No. 32 Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain in the second round of the singles tournament on Thursday. Sorribes Tormo advanced by defeating American qualifier Christina McHale, 6-2, 6-1.

The 24-year-old Tan is ranked 611th in doubles and has never played in that event at Wimbledon. Korpatsch, a 27-year-old German who is ranked 298th in doubles, lost in the first round of the singles tournament but has never played a doubles match at any Grand Slam tournament.

Tan was two points from losing to Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon champion who hadn’t played a singles match since injuring herself in the first round a year ago at the All England Club.

The match lasted 3 hours, 11 minutes.

“If you’re broken after a 3 (hour) match the day before, you can’t play professional (tennis). That’s my opinion,” Korpatsch wrote.

Tan and Korpatsch were scheduled to play 15th-seeded Nadiia Kichenok and Raluca Olaru on Wednesday in the first round of the doubles tournament. They were replaced in the draw by Valentini Grammatikopoulou and Peangtarn Plipuech.

AP sports writer Chris LeHourites contributed to this story.