<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;">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.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.”</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>“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.”</div><div><br></div><div>Murray can still hit crisp, clean groundstrokes, and he accumulated merely 13 unforced errors to 39 winners against the 6-foot-10 (2.08-meter) Isner. And Murray can still return about as well as anyone, often getting serves topping 130 mph (210 kph) 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 3 1/2 hours.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>Isner erased the first with a drop volley winner, part of a tremendous display of deft touch up at the net, where he won the point on 43 of 61 trips forward.</div><div><br></div><div>“This is why I still play,” Isner said. “This is why I work hard.”</div><div><br></div><div>When the second break chance for Murray arrived moments later, Isner got out of the game this way: 128 mph (206 kph) ace, 126 mph (203 kph) ace, 134 mph (216 kph) service winner.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>But Isner quickly broke to go up 3-2 in the fourth and that, essentially, was that.</div><div><br></div><div>How did Isner hold off any chance of a comeback by Murray?</div><div><br></div><div>“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.”</div><div><br></div><div>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 No. 3 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).</div><div><br></div><div>Only four of the top 11 men in the ATP rankings are in the bracket after Day 3.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>Raducanu won the championship at Flushing Meadows in September as an unseeded player who went through qualifying at age 18.</div><div><br></div><div>Since then, she’s had a birthday — and has not made it past the second round at a major.</div><div><br></div><div>“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.” -AP</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/TR</div>