Seven marquee players withdrew from their Wimbledon second round matches on Wednesday which attracted speculations that the grasscourts at the All England Club may just be too slippery for the players.
Players who pulled out of their second round matches at the Wimbledon 2013 Championships were world number two Victoria Azarenka, number six Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, number 10th seed Marin Cilic, number 18 John Isner, Radek Stepanek, Yaroslava Shvedova and Belgium’s Steve Darcis, who just caused one of the biggest upsets in tennis history when he eliminated two-time champion Rafael Nadal on Monday.
“Wimbledon is just a tournament I was looking so forward to,” Azarenka said. “I love playing here. To not be able to kind of play just because of something with such a bad luck is very, very frustrating. I couldn’t be more disappointed.”
Azarenka had an awkward fall during her first round match, injury her knee and after much consideration, she opted to pull out because she felt that she hasn’t fully recovered from the injury.
For Tsonga, he withdrew from his second round match while trailing to Ernests Gulbis of Latvia. The Latvian player was leading 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 before Tsonga opted to stop. Tsonga was a semifinalist in 2011 and last year.
Cilic and Isner had the same problems, having left knee injuries which forced them out of the competition.
“I was the highest-seeded player [in that section] on a surface that I’m tough to beat on, given how well I can serve and how much I can hold serve,” Isner said. “That’s very disappointing. It’s tough to think about. I had a good chance to go pretty far here.”
Darcis withdrew from his second round match against Lukasz Kubot because of an injured right shoulder. The Belgian, who was raring to make a deep run in this tournament after a sensational victory over Nadal, said that he couldn’t compete at a high level because he couldn’t serve due to the injury.
“I cannot serve,” he said. “Even on the forehand side, I cannot hit a ball. It makes no sense to go on the court to withdraw after two games.”
“I think when you beat a guy like Rafa in the first round, you want to show more, you want to play more matches. I was playing maybe the best tennis in my life here,” he added.
