Adidas provided tennis players Andy Murray with a new pair of shorts after Murray "blamed the depths of his shorts' pockets" for allowing spare balls to drop onto the court during his win over Marcos Baghdatis Saturday night at Wimbledon, according to Hannah Furness of the London TELEGRAPH. Murray, who has a £15M ($23.5M) sponsorship deal with adidas, claimed his shorts "lost him two points" when tennis balls rolled out during play, "causing him to become distracted several times." The falling balls prompted one commentator to say, "That's throwing his concentration" and "That ball's come out again." One noted, "He's got £20.5M ($32.1M) in prize money; you'd think he'd have deeper pockets at least" (TELEGRAPH, 7/2). In Glasgow, Claire Smith reported that former Wimbledon champion and current BBC commentator John McEnroe said that "he was at a loss to understand how Murray's second ball kept escaping and bouncing across the court." McEnroe said, "The pockets in the shorts these days are very deep. The ball is doing well to get out of there" (SCOTSMAN, 7/2).
FAULTY POCKETS: MARKETING MAGAZINE's Matthew Chapman reported that adidas "attributed the faulty shorts to human error," because the pockets on the "hand-made shorts had been made too shallow." An adidas statement said, "Adidas works closely with Andy on the design of all his kit and we believe the issues were the result of an individual technical error in the hand-made pockets of those shorts. Andy will now wear the Barricade Bermuda short" (MARKETINGMAGAZINE.co.uk, 7/2).
REPORTER TESTS SHORTS: In London, Laurie Whitwell reported that "there is no specific rule about balls falling out of a pocket, but it comes under the hindrance law." That law states that, "if a player is hindered in playing a point by a deliberate act of an opponent, the player wins the point." Meanwhile, Whitwell tested the shorts to see if he could dislodge any tennis balls. Whitwell "ran a series of 15-metre sprints, side-stepped a bit and jumped up and down on the spot for 60 seconds." However, the reporter was "unable to dislodge a ball from the pockets." Whitwell added that, "It was only when I violently wiggled my legs that I could get the ball to nudge even slightly" (DAILY MAIL, 7/1).
