Few things have irritated me more than the way the organisers of the tournament at Queen’s Club handled a rainy semi-finals day in London.
With plenty of rain forecast for last Saturday, both semi-finals were scheduled back-to-back on Centre Court, starting with Lleyton Hewitt against Marin Cilic, followed by Andy Murray against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
When the rain interrupted the first match, organisers panicked and made the ridiculous and uncalled-for decision to move the Hewitt- Cilic contest – that had already started – to Court One , a court with almost no audience and no hawk-eye, so that the Centre Court crowd could watch Murray play Cilic before the rain started again and potentially wash out the rest of the day’s play.
First of all this is London – a place where rain is so common that checking the forecast isn’t really necessary. So for a tournament that dates back to the late 1800s, rain should not cause such panic and consequently poor decisions.
An ATP semi-finalist should not be asked to change courts midway through his match to be replaced by a more popular player. Hewitt and Cilic, both of whom are former champions at Queen’s Club, deserve an audience for their match and more importantly deserve the right to challenge a call.
If the organisers wanted to make sure Murray played his semifinal on Saturday, they could have initially scheduled him first or at least planned to play the semis on separate courts, alerting the players the day before.
But pushing Hewitt, a former world No1, a former Wimbledon champion and a four-time winner at the Queen’s Club to Court One so their precious Murray doesn’t face the possibility of playing two matches on Sunday is farcical.
The Scot wouldn’t have been the first nor the last player forced to play two matches in one day due to weather – it comes with the job and more specifically the territory.
Hewitt was polite enough to only say that the organisers’ decision was “weird”. I’m sure another player would have used harsher words.
While I’m not that surprised that the people at Queen’s came up with such a partisan decision I still find it appalling. It could well be Hewitt’s last showing there and it’s a shame that the incident could be his final experience at the tournament.
Thumbs up Andy Murray and Roger Federer
The former for winning the Queen’s Club title on his first tournament back from injury and the latter for pulling through some tough three setters against Tommy Haas and Mikhail Youzhny to win a 77th career title and tie John McEnroe for third place on the all-time titles winners list.
Thumbs down Wimbledon organisers
I know it seems that I have a general pickle with British tennis chiefs as I really don’t. But when I found out that Russia’s Alisa Kleybanova, who fought off cancer and is formulating a comeback, was denied a Wimbledon wildcard, you have to ask why?
The 23-year-old was ranked as high as No20 before she went off tour to receive treatment and while she wasn’t savvy enough to get into the Wimbledon draw with a protected ranking, I couldn’t think of anyone who could be more worthy of a wildcard.
Shot of the week Gael Monfils vs Tommy Haas (Halle Open)
Gael Monfils hit the craziest thing we’ve seen on a tennis court in quite a while in Halle last week. The French entertainer, who was trailing Tommy Haas 7-6, 3-5 in the quarter-finals, got a high ball from the German which any regular player would have simply smashed.
But not Monfils. He let the ball bounce between his legs then spun 180 degrees and hit a rotating smash with his back to the net. A couple of shots later his backhand down the line attempt was an inch wide and he lost the point. People are still talking about it though.
This week
A strong field at Eastbourne sees Petra Kvitova and Caroline Wozniacki searching for some form on grass in the women’s, while in the men’s Milos Raonic and Gilles Simon head the seeds. More ATP and WTA action takes place in s-Hertogenbosch while Wimbledon qualifying gets underway.
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