The king of Queen’s! Murray banks £600k a year for Wimbledon warm-up
ANDY MURRAY has signed a multi-millionpound deal with the Lawn Tennis Association that will ensure his participation at the pre-Wimbledon event at Queen’s Club for the rest of his career. However, attempts by the governing body to officially harness the pulling power of Murray in promoting their efforts to increase participation remain on the drawing board. The LTA, who own the event currently known as the AEGON Championships, last night announced that the five-times champion will be tied to the tournament until he retires. In line with Murray’s going rate for appearance fees, the agreement is expected to earn him around £600,000 for each year. The governing body, bankrolled by Wimbledon’s profits, wanted to extend the deal to tie Murray into supporting their drive to promote the game at grassroots level. The three-times Sports Personality of the Year is known for his support of other British players and interest in the welfare of the domestic game, but that stops short of wanting to be tied into toeing the party line. He has also stated in the past that he needs to concentrate on fighting it out at the top of the game and will save his efforts to improve British tennis until he has more time in retirement. During the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in November he again questioned the chopping and changing in the LTA’s performance department, although it stopped short of his onslaught in the immediate aftermath of winning the Davis Cup in 2015. He gets on well with those who run the event at Queen’s, but LTA chief executive Michael Downey has been unable to forge much of a relationship with the Scot. The 29-year-old is said to be keeping an open mind on the recent arrival of Simon Timson as LTA performance director, a nontennis specialist who flew out to Murray’s training camp in December to try to nurture a relationship with the world No 1. For Queen’s, signing up Murray is an important move in commercial terms. AEGON are ending their sponsorship after this year, which has seen them put their name to all the main grass-court events in the lead-up to the big fortnight. The LTA are now looking to sell sponsorship of Queen’s separately, rather than including it in the overall package. Having Murray’s guaranteed presence is very useful, as is the announcement that the BBC will cover it until at least 2024. Queen’s will this year also add more than 2,000 seats to its Centre Court, taking the capacity of the main arena to just over 9,000. ‘I’ve always loved playing the event and I’m really happy to know that I will play at Queen’s for as long as my career lasts,’ said Murray. Jo Konta and Dan Evans were happily having to delay their arrivals in Melbourne for the Australian Open after making good progress in the main warmup event in Sydney. British No 3 Evans came back from losing the first five games to upset world No 37 Marcel Granollers of Spain 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 and set up a quarter-final today against Dominic Thiem. Konta today faces Eugenie Bouchard in the semi-finals of the women’s event after defeating Russia’s Daria Kasatkina 6-3, 7-5.