Wimbledon Drama On Centre Court As Federer and Djokovic Opponents Retire

Tennis fans from all over the world watch Wimbledon as it is arguably the most popular out of the four grand slams. On 4th of July, fans paid good money to get seats at Centre Court as there were a number of good matches scheduled to take place.

Two of the crowd favorites in Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic were scheduled to play and it always great fun when these top ranked players take center stage.

However the crowds were left disappointed as the match between Djokovic and Martin Klizan finished early as Klizan was forced to retire with the score on 3-6, 0-2. The match lasted just 40 minutes and fans were visibly disappointed to see Klizan drop out. He entered the match with his leg taped and mid-way through appeared to be in great discomfort which resulted in him pulling out.

To make matters worse, the seven time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer was also unable to complete his match as his opponent Alexandr Dolgopolov also dropped out with a leg injury when the score was on 6-3, 3-0 and just 43 minutes of play on the clock. There were more than 15,000 fans in attendance who could not believe the very same thing was happening again and rightly felt that they were robbed of the opportunity of seeing two matches finished.

Wimbledon

Wimbledon organizers felt the disappointment of the crowd and in jest asked Federer and Djokovic if they could go back on centre court and play out a final set for the sake of the crowd. That did not happen but the fact that two players dropped out in the first round on the same day – raises a number of questions.

Wimbledon pays out £35,000 to first round losers and for some of these players that is a lot of money. This could be one of the reasons why players who are injured are still forcing themselves to compete knowing that they will get paid if they show up. The second reason is because Wimbledon is one of the most popular grand slam tournaments and a chance to play on center court could be too good to miss.

Federer also expressed his disappointment during a post-match interview and said that he felt for the fans. During the first two days at Wimbledon, a total of seven players had dropped out due to injury and the most famous of them was Australian Nick Kyrgios.