Britain's top players at Wimbledon stick to tennis on UK election day

LONDON (AP) — Some of Britain's top tennis players are avoiding election talk like double-faults at Wimbledon.

Polls opened Thursday morning in the U.K.'s first national election in almost five years, but Britain's rising stars are sticking to the tennis at the All England Club.

Jack Draper says he has no interest in politics. Katie Boulter doesn't want to talk about it. A smiling Emma Raducanu claimed on election eve that she “didn’t even know it was tomorrow.”

The 22-year-old Draper, who is Britain's highest-ranked men's singles player, gave a one-word answer — “No” — when asked if he's interested in politics.

In a big day for British players on Thursday, Draper faces Cameron Norrie in a second-round match. He didn't plan on following any election coverage.

“I mean, it’s a crazy busy time for us tennis players. There’s not much TV watching. There’s not much time to sort of be thinking about that,” he said on Tuesday. “Obviously it’s really important, so we’ll see.”

Boulter, the top-ranked women’s singles player in Britain, has turned away a couple of election-related questions.

“To be honest I’m here to focus on the tennis. I’m not necessarily sure what the correlation is between the two,” she said on Saturday in a pre-tournament news conference. “Of course it’s a huge moment for our country, but I will cross that bridge a little bit later away from the tennis courts.”

On Tuesday, the 27-year-old Boulter had a similar response when asked if she'll be voting before her match Thursday against compatriot Harriet Dart.

Hundreds of thousands of people had cast their ballot by postal vote before in-person voting began Thursday. Polls close at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Thursday night.

Now 21 years old, Raducanu wasn't eligible to vote in the 2019 national election.

The 2021 U.S. Open champion was asked about the election at her news conference after beating Elise Mertens 6-1, 6-2 on Wednesday. She was asked if she will try to vote in the morning and if she will track the election into the evening.

The transcript of her answer said she was smiling when she responded: “No. I think I’ll have a lie-in, then I’ll come to practice. I didn’t even know it was tomorrow, to be honest. Thanks for letting me know.”

In a pre-tournament news conference Saturday, she indicated that she was aware of the election, though she didn't offer an opinion about it.

“I have been living a bit under a rock the last few weeks,” she said. “I’ve been just focusing on my tennis. I haven’t really had time to do much else. I’ve channeled all my energy into that. Yeah, the elections are happening. So are the Euros. I think that brings a lot of fun and brings everyone together. I will be following that though tomorrow afternoon.”

Andy Murray, a two-time Wimbledon champion who will be on court in doubles Thursday, took some criticism in 2014 when he signaled his support for Scottish independence just hours before the polls opened. That referendum failed.

British player Liam Broady, who has always been outspoken on political issues, said he voted by mail. He's from Stockport just outside Manchester.

“I don’t think there are hardly any players that really are politically inclined as much as I am or if they are, they keep their cards close to their chest,” the 30-year-old Broady told The Associated Press. “It’s not something that I see, to be honest, spoken about very often, which I guess is probably a good thing as well. The players just treat each other as players, and that’s that.”

The Conservative Party has been in power since 2010, and the Labour Party is widely expected to win Thursday.

“It's very similar to how it is in the States at the moment — you’re picking the best of a bad bunch,” Broady said. “I think that’s why a lot of my own generation and people younger than myself have become a little bit disillusioned with politics. It kind of feels like everybody's the same now, things don’t really change.

“It’s a two-party sort of problem in the U.K. at the moment and obviously with the Labour Party going so central it kind of feels like there aren’t really many different options.”

AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis

Supporters of Britain's Emma Raducanu react after her win over Elise Mertens of Belgium in their match on day three at the Wimbledon tennis championships in London, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

Emma Raducanu of Britain celebrates after defeating Elise Mertens of Belgium in their match on day three at the Wimbledon tennis championships in London, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

Britain's Katie Boulter on the practice court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London, Saturday June 29, 2024. The Wimbledon Championships begin on July 1. (John Walton/PA via AP)

Jack Draper of Britain celebrates after defeating Elias Ymer of Sweden in their first round match at the Wimbledon tennis championships in London, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

President Joe Biden could make a decision within days whether to remain a candidate for reelection, said Hawaii’s governor who participated in a recent meeting with Biden and other Democratic governors and whose family has known the president for years.

And if Biden decides not to run, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told The Associated Press on Saturday that he believes the president will designate Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him on the ticket.

“I think the president stays in this race unless he feels that it is not winnable, or he feels that he has to hear other voices in his inner circle that he shouldn’t run,” Green said. “If the president felt that he wasn’t up to it and truly not up to it, he would step down.

“We’ll probably know in the next couple of days how the president feels about all this,” he said.

Biden has repeatedly insisted that he will remain in the race against his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. But questions about Biden's mental acuity have swirled since his disastrous debate performance last month. As some of his fellow Democrats have encouraged Biden to exit the campaign, the president has pointed to support from other elected officials in the party, particularly governors.

Green, who was a physician on Hawaii's Big Island before he was elected governor, said everyone has parents or grandparents who have moments that aren’t that great or pauses in their ability to express themselves clearly. But, he added, they aren’t discarded because of their experience, wisdom and their role in the family.

“That’s why I’m standing by the president until he tells me otherwise,” said Green.

Green said the timeline of a few days for a decision anticipates pressure that might be placed on Biden after members of Congress return this week to Capitol Hill.

“I really, honestly think that he has to make the decision. And it should not come from another governor. It should not come from anyone but the closest, closest advisers to him and his own heart,” Green said.

Green was quick to point out that Trump is only three years younger than Biden and both will have bad days going forward. But he argued that temperament is more important than age.

“For God’s sake, these two guys have to hold the nuclear codes," Green said. “I don’t want someone who tweets in the middle of the night and rages at other countries. That is not good. That’s not the problem we have with President Biden.”

If Biden were to leave the campaign, Green said the president should be allowed to say who he thinks should replace him on the ticket.

“I think it’s very clear that the Democratic Party would be ecstatic overall to have the president designate his vice president if it came to that,” Green said.

Harris “is a powerful person, she is also a thought-leading woman, she’s an African American who was (California’s) attorney general,” Green said. “There are no credentials that are better than what the current vice president has.”

Green, whose wife’s uncle was Biden’s college roommate, also provided insight into last week’s meeting that governors had with the president. During the meeting, Green asked Biden about his health. Biden responded by saying everything was fine except for his brain.

Green told the AP that the president was joking, and that context was lost when leaked by other people.

“It was absolutely a joke, and in order to make a self-deprecating joke, you have to have intact cognitive function, period,” Green said.

He also discounted any assertion that advisers crafted the meeting to have governors supportive of Biden speak first to quell any dissent. Instead, he said it was a very candid, unscripted conversation with 25 governors with differing opinions.

“That call had just like you’d expect in a coffee shop, a few people mouthed off, a few people, you know, probably excessively praised the president, but almost everybody was just trying to see, ‘Are we OK?’” Green said.

Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.

FILE - President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden walk with Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, second from left, and his wife Jaime Green as they pass the massive Banyan tree while visiting areas devastated by the Maui wildfires, Aug. 21, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Green, on Saturday, July 6, 2024, said Biden could decide within days whether to remain a candidate for re-election and that if the president drops out, he expects Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)