Taylor Townsend makes Jamie Murray do press-ups for ‘bloody serving in the net’

Wimbledon
Jamie Murray and Taylor Townsend at Wimbledon

Jamie Murray was forced to do press-ups as a punishment by his hardline partner Taylor Townsend after their mixed doubles win at Wimbledon.

Britain’s Murray and American Townsend needed two tie-breaks, the second a marathon ending 15-13, to beat Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Jan Zielinski.

“It was punishment for me to keep bloody serving in the net,” said Murray.

“I was like blowing it all of the time. She was like, ‘oh my God, we should do some press-ups’.

“She did outlast me. I said to her ‘keep going, I don’t want to fail in front of all of these people’. I was happy to bow out after 10. I don’t like them.”

Murray had earlier won in the men’s doubles with Australian partner Michael Venus in three sets against Alexander Erler and Lucas Miedler.

But that gruelling schedule did not stop Townsend from making the Scot do a forfeit alongside her for not serving well enough.

“Long day. Successful in the end, yeah. I didn’t really want to be playing a third set there but we did well to get through. We did really well in the men’s match this morning and then the mixed was a battle,” he added.

“Played five sets and four tiebreaks so happy to get through and I think tomorrow we’ll play mixed, we won’t play men’s tomorrow, still waiting for people to win and stuff. But happy days, yeah.

“We obviously had to finish the mixed. They needed to get through all the first rounds by Sunday because the final is on Thursday so I knew we were going to have to play that. Obviously they didn’t really play that many second-round men’s matches. I think they’re still a little bit behind.

“I think they were a bit unfortunate in a way that quite a lot of sort of mid-ranked, lower-ranked singles players that were in the doubles won through multiple rounds of the singles so they couldn’t get through the first round doubles so there was a bit of a backlog.

“It’s always nice to win. If you play two matches and lose two in the same day, that’s rough going that.”

British pair Joe Salisbury and Heather Watson are also through to the third round after beating Nathaniel Lammons and Giuliana Olmos.

But Katie Boulter and her Australian boyfriend Alex De Minaur were sunk in three sets by Joran Vliegen and Xu Yifan.

READ MORE: ‘The top 10 right now is one of the weakest we’ve seen for years, Novak Djokovic aside’

Jamie Murray Taylor Townsend

Latest