The absurdity of tennis players’ toilet breaks

Forgive the personal question, but how long does it take you to, you know, go to the gents, ladies, non-binary? Quite what Stefanos Tsitsipas was doing in there in any of his numerous toilet breaks during the epic first-round US Open encounter with Andy Murray at Flushing (geddit?) Meadows is anybody’s guess. It clearly riled Murray — never the hardest thing to do — who was playing as well as ever, and is the ironman, quite literally, of Grand Slam tennis. He has also rather wittily pointed out that Jeff Bezos can get into space and back again more quickly than Tsitsipas can go to the loo.

There is something pleasingly humdrum about the world no. 3 grabbing a paper from his bag and wandering off to the gents. Who hasn’t done that at work? But as the match with Murray must surely count as a ‘meeting’, nipping off for a ‘comfort break’ is downright rude.