Tennis News: Taylor Fritz, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Andrey Rublev

The tennis shot clock has certainly been a point of debate among players. One of the issues was when an umpire would start the clock so that a player had only 30 seconds to serve. Should it start after a point is finished or at some other point? Taylor Fritz and other players had their opinions, but tennis officials were not overly clear.

The Shanghai Masters has been a bit of a mess with officiating. The worst point came when Stan Wawrinka was playing Flavio Cobolli, and the umpire gave the wrong score in the third set. Cobolli was awarded a point he shouldn't have been, and that helped him move on to victory.

Stefanos Tsitsipas has an issue with one umpire at the Shanghai Masters, Fergus Murphy, who the Greek felt was unfair and had several calls go against him. The crowd doesn't like it when a player complains normally, but Fritz had Tsitsipas' back, especially in terms of the shot clock for serves.

Taylor Fritz has Stefanos Tsitsipas' back and Andrey Rublev almost had an amputation

During his run in Shanghai, Fritz said, "I always had a problem, particularly with Fergus, because he would start the clock so fast. I play very quickly, and I was getting time violations called on me from him, but only from him, so I complained about that a lot."

Murphy has been a mostly trusted umpire during matches, but the rule about when the serve clock should start was an umpire judgment. Now the rule has been clarified. Hopefully, Murphy will not be upsetting Fritz and Tsitsipas further as all three people know the stricter language of the shot clock rule: It starts when the previous point ends.

In more dire news, top-ten player Andrey Rublev began to struggle with injury at the US Open. So much so that he required surgery. The specific issue of the injury was not disclosed, but on the BetBoom Tennis podcast, Rublev explained that he was not only seriously injured, but the problem might have required some kind of amputation.

Translated from Russian, Rublev said, "After the US Open, I was preparing for China, and a couple of days before the flight, I needed an operation, which, if not performed, could have led to amputation. I was lucky that it all became clear in the first three or four hours because after five or six hours, amputation becomes necessary."

That, of course, sounds horrific. Thankfully, Rublev was able to come back quickly and take part in the China Open. While the Russian certainly has temper issues on the court, he appears to be exceedingly nice when not playing. One hopes he continues to play, though if he had had an amputation, one could assume he would need to stop.

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