Novak Djokovic has criticised Wimbledon for slippery courts after top players were left injured by falls on the grass.
The former No 1, who has won the championship seven times, set up a row with the All England Club bosses, saying the show courts became “more slippery” when the roof was closed and blaming this for injuries.
Emma Raducanu called a physio onto court after hurting her ankle and back in a fall during the third set of her match against Lulu Sun. Grigor Dimitrov, the world No 10, had to retire from a match after only eight games because of a slip.
Djokovic was left practically doing the splits after slipping in his match against Holger Rune on Monday evening. “Once you close the roof, you know that the grass is going to be more slippery so there’s more chances that players will fall,” Djokovic said last night after his fourth-round match.
“Unfortunately some of the falls have caused some of the players to withdraw, like Dimitrov yesterday. We saw [the German player Alexander] Zverev as well in his previous match slightly injured his knee. That was troubling him even today.”
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This directly contradicted what Sally Bolton, the chief executive of Wimbledon, had said earlier in the day.
“The two show courts with the roofs, the courts are very dry — there isn’t any dampness in there,” she told reporters. “So that’s why we have in both show courts a complex mechanism for keeping the air in the right condition for the court to be in the right condition.
“Those systems have been working very hard but they’ve been working fine so we have no concerns about the courts.”
The roofs on Court 1 and Centre Court have been shut for much of the past five days after close to a month’s rain fell in the first eight days of the tournament, interrupting play on the outside courts.
Wimbledon said its 600 air distributors that pump dry air were sufficient to prevent condensation forming on the surface of the court, even when the weather was wet and there were 15,000 fans in the seats.
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Bosses have said the issues players have experienced are because the grass is naturally lusher in week one as the leaf “has got more moisture in it”, but that the courts tend to dry out as they wear more and become drier.
“That’s the nature of grass courts themselves rather than any particular conditions as a result of the wet weather we’ve had,” Bolton said.
Dimitrov exited his fourth-round match with the score at 5-3, after slipping and injuring his knee. John McEnroe, the seven-time grand slam winner, said: “I feel horrible, and obviously no one feels worse than Grigor. He’s going to break down in tears when he gets back after all the work he put in.”
Nick Kyrgios, the former Australian No 1, was asked what players in the locker room were saying about the courts. “Whatever it is, it’s not good to see, if someone like Dimitrov, later in his career and playing some of his best tennis, I hate to see him go down like that.”
Alex de Minaur, the Australian No 9, said the injuries were ‘unfortunate obviously’, adding: “You never want to see this.”
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There were also complaints about slipperiness on the outside Court 12 from Dan Evans, the British No 3, who claimed that Wimbledon staff “don’t care about the players”.
“Obviously, that grass court wasn’t safe where I slipped I don’t think,” he said. “I didn’t think the court was playable last night for the large majority of the time we were on court. The powers that be in the fancy jackets didn’t agree with me and we carried on.”
However, Greg Rusedski, the former world No 4, defended the club, saying: “It’s called grass, you’re supposed to slip. Everybody’s like, ‘oh, there’s a bad bounce’. God Almighty — go and play in the 1990s and the last century,” he said.
“You’re expecting bad bounces, it’s not supposed to be perfect. Grass courts have never been better. Also, you’ve got to look at the way the grass works. You’re going to slip, that’s part of the business and you’ve just got to deal with it.”
The show court worries are a repeat of 2021, when Serena Williams and Frenchman Adrian Mannarino had to pull out of matches after slipping on the grass. Djokovic also complained that year, saying he could not remember falling over so many times on a court.
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The groundsmen have previously said they start the fortnight with as much moisture as they dare so the courts have the best chance of surviving the championships. On Tuesday, the Met Office confirmed a month’s rain had fallen in the first eight days of the championships — 47mm, or close to two inches — including 8.4mm on Monday.
In a statement issued on Tuesday morning Jamie Baker, the tournament director, said that “persistent wet weather” meant matches in the mixed doubles were well behind schedule. As a result the finals schedule has been changed, with Saturday’s women’s singles final to be followed by the men’s and women’s doubles finals.
On Sunday, the men’s singles final will be followed by the mixed doubles final. Matches in the first two rounds of the mixed doubles have already been reduced from three sets to two, with a ten-point tie-break decider.
