Novak Djokovic has just reached the quarters in Wimbledon, but the Serbian is not a happy guy right now.
Nole is grappling with a shoulder injury, and he is forced to play for two consecutive days at the SW19 because of a strange decision made by the organization.
What happened?
Nole had to play on Monday his 4th round against Mannarino soon after the Muller-Nadal epic match that lasted almost 5 hours. Nole was scheduled on the same court (no.1), but that court doesn’t have lights. Therefore, that contest could have been played only on the centre court, but eventually the organization decided to postpone it for “security reasons.”
In fact, according to the organization, they had to move 30,000 people, and that would have been too dangerous.
Nobody has really understood the meaning of that, and Djokovic was absolutely furious because that means that he has to play for two consecutive days, and that is not ideal especially with an injured shoulder.
They made an excuse. DJOKOVIC
Soon after his win against Mannarino, in the press conference, Nole commented
“You know, I obviously was not happy not to play last night. I wanted to play. I thought we could have played,” said Djokovic following a straight-set win against the Frenchman on Tuesday. “We were kept for two-and-a-half hours in the dark, in a way, without knowing what we are going to do. So you were on your toes warming up, cooling down. Referee’s office was completely indecisive.”
We spoke with the referee, supervisors, trying to understand the thought process that they are having,” he said. “I just think it was a wrong decision not to play us last night because we could have played. I think the last match on the Centre Court was done before 7:00. Having in mind that Centre Court has the roof and lights, we could have played till 11:00. We went to the referee’s office before 8:00. There were security reasons. That was the only excuse.
…I just didn’t see any logic in not playing us on the Centre Court. If the Court 1 ticket holders cannot go to the Centre Court, only the second Centre Court ticket holders can go, which they were already at the hill. They could just make the announcement, move them in and we could play.”
Nole will face Tomas Berdych on Court no.1 (again) o Wednesday as a second match. The former world no.1 will probably not be in his best mood for that.
