Andy Murray battled to a dramatic five-set defeat to no.3 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas at the US Open.

The near five-hour epic in the Arthur Ashe Stadium was full of brilliant tennis, controversy and memorable moments.

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The 34-year-old Brit was handed a tough draw to get his campaign in New York underway, but rolled back the years to give us scenes we thought may never be possible following his injury hell.

The three-time Grand Slam winner came out of the blocks on fire taking the first set 6-2.

The second was within his grasp and went to a tie-break, but bizarrely lost due to his sweat soaked shoes.

Both players were drenched in sweat after two sets and needed a change of clothes, but Murray bemoaned the fact he had only brought one pair of footwear.

“I need new shoes,” screamed Murray as he desperately tried to dry them with the air conditioning unit beside him.

A change of clothes, and socks, did just the job for the 2012 champion as he rallied to take the third set and go 2-1 up.

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Tsitsipas raced to a 5-0 lead in the fourth and eventually took the set 6-3.

The Greek star took the opportunity for a toilet break before the start of the fifth set, which lasted around eight minutes.

Murray was incensed by the length of time his opponent was taking, ranting at the umpire and match referee.

Tsitsipas has form for this and was accused by Alexander Zverev, at the tournament in Cincinnati a fortnight ago, of texting his team on another particularly long break, which is against the rules.

Murray bellowed to his team ‘he’s cheating’ and continued his rant long into the set as he said ‘It’s never once taken me that long to go to the toilet’.

The break clearly affected him and Tsitsipas broke him early in the fifth and went on to claim the match.

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Murray gave a lengthy response in his post-match press conference when asked about the toilet break and said it affected the result and said he ‘lost some respect’ for his opponent.

“It’s not so much leaving the court. It’s the amount of time,” said Murray.

“I spoke to my team before the match about it and said to expect that, prepare for it if things were not going his way. So I was trying to do that.

“But the issue is that you cannot stop the way that that affects you physically. When you’re playing a brutal match like that, you know, stopping for seven, eight minutes, you do cool down.

“It’s just disappointing because I feel it influenced the outcome of the match. I’m not saying I necessarily win that match, for sure, but it had influence on what was happening after those breaks.

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“I rate him a lot. I think he’s a brilliant player. I think he’s great for the game. But I have zero time for that stuff at all, and I lost respect for him.

“That’s what I feel. But if everyone else feels like that’s totally cool and there’s no issue with it, then maybe I’m the one being unreasonable.

“But I think it’s nonsense. And he knows it, as well.”

The match will go down in the record books as a first round defeat, but that far from told the story.

Source: TalkSport.com Tennis