10 Things I Learned From Wimbledon 2013
9. Grass Is Slippery
The biggest story on Wimbledons first week came on an unassuming Wednesdaywhere no big upsets were expected yet the top seeds started dropping like passengers aboard a sinking cruise ship. The biggest shock wasnt the fact that 7 former world number one seeds all crashed out in one single day but the manner of many their exits were shocking and somewhat surprising. 7 matches ended due either to retirements or walkovers, the most in a single day of Grand Slam play in the Open era.
Injuries played a big part of many of the shock defeats forcing players to drop out of SW19 often mid match which is the worst way to go out of a tournament is to have your body quit on you. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga went down with an elbow injury which 10th seed Marin Cilic also crashed out while even the man who played the longest tennis match in history John Isner only lasted two games of his second round match before being struck down by a knee injury.
While over in the womans draw they lost even more big name players as Ana Ivanovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Jelena Jankovic all went out while the ranked number 2 and 3 seeds Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka were also knocked out. Azarenka was quick to blame the courts for her injury retirement having slipped over in both her first and second round forcing her retirement with a knee injury.
Maria Sharapova avoided injury but was slipping a lot during her match and also spoke up again the courts calling them unsafe an allegation quickly denied by Wimbledon officials who said they did nothing new to any of the play courts to make them more slippery. Now were the courts a bit slippy at the start of the tournament? Well maybe 7 injury withdrawals is certainly evidence to suggest players were falling over and getting hurt.
Other ideas came from the cold yet humid weather going though Britain which isnt healthy on moving joints and of course playing the French Open two weeks before in my opinion is never a good idea. It doesnt give players much time to recover before they have to move and learn to adjust to grass courts so all those could be factors.
After the disastrous Wednesday slips and injury withdraws quickly dropped so many it was a blip or if there was a problem it was quickly fixed whatever the reason everyone was looking at the grass courts with a little more scrutiny for the rest of the tournament. Certainly it cant be the only reason players can just be real and clumsy too but I guess players were upset at going out so early in such a big championship but it certainly was one amazing shock filled day few of us will forget.