Andy Murray drops some heavy truth on CEO of Lacoste

People just cannot stop voicing their opinions about Stefanos Tsitsipas’ week at the ATP Finals, it seems. Tsitsipas was forced to retire with a back injury after three games in his second match of the tournament. Was he injured prior to the match and should he have just withdrawn before the match against Holger Rune and allowed alternate Hubert Hurkacz to play instead? The CEO of Lacoste, Guibert Thierry, thinks so and Andy Murray felt the need to call Thierry out for his opinion.

Of course, Andy Murray knows a thing or five about injuries. He has suffered lots of different ones over the last decade and they have robbed him of being able to play his best. Murray has won Wimbledon twice and the US Open once, plus the Olympics twice, but he hasn’t won any tournament since 2019.

For a non-athlete CEO to comment on a high-level professional player’s injury status clearly rankled Andy Murray. And, well…Murray should be miffed. The Lacoste CEO doesn’t truly know what a top-ten tennis player has to go through to be ready to try to win tournaments. The CEO only really cares about what that player is wearing while playing matches, right?

Andy Murray feels driven to defend Stefanos Tsitsipas

Hurkacz did replace Tsitsipas in what would have been Tsitsipas’s third match of the week. Hurkacz then lost to Novak Djokovic, who wears Lacoste-brand clothing. Tsitsipas may have somewhat gained monetarily from playing enough games – three – to qualify for his second appearance fee of the week at the ATP Finals, but ultimately he lost out as he couldn’t finish the week.

That didn’t stop Thierry from taking a swipe at Tsitsipas via X (formerly Twitter). In a tweet that praised Jannik Sinner, the only player in the ATP Finals to so far be undefeated in the tournament, Thierry said, “Despite the unfair behavior of Tsitsipas, he showed to everyone why he is a future champ and an authentic guy.” “Unfair behavior” is extremely dismissive of a player getting hurt and there seems to be little doubt that Tsitsipas was actually injured. The question is how he handled playing a few short games in a match after being hurt, but Tsitsipas still has a right to try to earn a paycheck.

Andy Murray didn’t mince words in his repose to the tweet, thankfully. And what Murray said is 100 percent correct. It is one thing for people to comment on a player’s poor behavior on the court, say some negative response to Andrey Rublev getting so upset with himself that he slams his racket on his knee. But commenting negatively about a player who is hurt and cannot continue playing is punching below the belt.