NEW YORK—Andy Murray brought sound and fury during his four-set US Open loss to Fernando Verdasco.
Then the former world No. 1 called Verdasco out as a liar on social media.
Murray raged at officials for what he said was their failure to enforce the rules during the 10-minute extreme heat break.
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The three-time Grand Slam champion appeared to bark at the chair umpire "He's sitting there with his coach and his doubles partner. I had to tell them because nobody knows the fu--ing rules!"
Murray said Verdasco broke the rule talking to his coach during the break.
Verdasco, who snapped a seven-match losing streak to the Scot, said Murray is flat-out wrong.
“I know the rule exactly,” Verdsasco said after his second win in 15 meetings with Murray. “I didn't speak anything to any member of my team… I saw my coach in the locker room, but I didn’t even talk one word with him.
“If Andy said that, I don’t want to say that he lies, but I didn’t talk one word with my coach or any one member of my team.”
Murray pulled no punches in a stinging social media return.
The 2012 US Open champion posted this Instagram image with the sarcastic caption “I'm off to get a health check as apparently I've started imagining things," adding a hashtag liar, liar pants on fire.
The US Open extreme weather rule permits players to leave the court for a 10-minute break between the third and fourth sets.
However, during the break the rules state "no coaching will be allowed."
Murray said he was upset because Verdasco was chatting with both his coach and a fellow player during the break—and because the supervisor failed to step in to stop it.
"After the set I went for a shower. He was having an ice bath," Murray told the media after his 7-5, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 loss. "When I came out of the shower, his coach and... one of the Spanish doubles players was in there chatting to him, and you're not allowed to speak to your coach.
"I went and told the supervisor. I said, What are you guys doing? I mean, there's clear rules here and you're allowing this to take place. I don't get it. Then he ran through, Oh, you're not allowed to speak.
"I checked the rules beforehand, and I spoke to my team. We were clear you don't speak to your coaches whatever. They obviously weren't in there for long, but you got to do better than that. This is one of the biggest events in the world. If you have rules like that, you need to stick with them because one player getting to speak to the coach and the other not is not fair."
Verdasco said his coach walked in to use the restroom, but never spoke to his coach. During his ice bath, Verdasco said he briefly chatted with Marcos Baghdatis because he felt Murray might want to use the bath Baghdatis was occupying.
The Spaniard says a supervisor was in the room and said nothing because nothing wrong occurred.
"One of the supervisors that I was telling him, Please tell me every 30 seconds the time, they were there," Verdasco said. "If I was talking with my coach, they will put me warning or they would say something. But this never happen.
"Obviously they didn't tell me anything because I didn't do anything wrong. But I don't know why Andy said that. Maybe because he saw my coach, he thought that I was speaking with him. Like I said, he went to the toilet, not to talk to me."
Photo credit: Citi Open Facebook