So much for Super Tuesday. One abrupt Centre Court retirement against an ex-champ several years your senior might be regarded as a misfortune. Two on the same afternoon starts to look like a moment of genuine oddity, not to mention a disaster for the ticket-buying public, TV broadcasters and indeed the All England Club itself on one of its gala high-summer afternoons.
Wimbledon’s Super Tuesday had promised much, with back-to-back tournament bows for two of the basking lions of men’s tennis. Centre Court was set fair, tickets expensively procured, queues braved. In the event there was just enough time for the crowd to gush and coo at the sight of first Novak Djokovic and then the great Roger himself, to lose itself in a little of that old champion voodoo.
At which point: exit music. Shortly before five o’clock Roger Federer played one last dreamy backhand drop-shot winner and suddenly Alexandr Dolgopolov was wincing ruefully and wandering off court. That whole stellar double bill was done in just over an hour and half, two sets and twin injury retirements by a pair of outsiders a decade younger than the combined age of their opponents.
There were gasps around Centre Court, even a ripple of mild rebellion. An hour earlier Martin Klizan had retired at the same stage against Djokovic.
Klizan had taken to the court with his calf already strapped, winced around the place a bit and duly played out a set of his own before coming up lame.
There will, of course, be rumblings about this. Klizan will get £35,000 just for taking to the court and carrying his injured leg around for a while.
This is money well-earned in practice and preparation, the cycle of agony and toil that gets you here in the first place. But this was not in any sense a tennis match, or any kind of entertainment product worthy of the name.
Athletes struggle with injury all the time. Nobody gets out there without huge reserves of bravery and resilience. But something is amiss here. By the end of the second day of the championships the tally of retirements stood at seven men and one woman. As Djokovic suggested afterwards, it might be better to guarantee appearance money to those who make the draw, to allow a lucky loser to step in with no financial loss if injury strikes. Tennis is far from a gravy train for qualifiers and first-round losers. You can see the need to play.
Federer had sympathy for his opponent, suggesting players should only pull out if they are absolutely unable to go on, citing the chance that the other guy might twist an ankle or the skies close in. But then he can be excused believing in miracles. This is a veteran champ whose only really serious injury was sustained while running a bath for his daughters. The most remarkable thing about Federer isn’t that he is 35 years old. It’s the fact he is nearly 36, next month set to bring another meaningless notch on that friction-free timeline.
It is a shared theme right now: injury and physical stress set against the startling longevity of that stellar quartet at the very top. Roger, Rafa, Andy, Novak are all 30 or over now. There is surely an economic element to this sustained supremacy. The big four are like one-man city states, surrounded by teams of crimpers and fluffers, out there at the frontier of sports science and coaching, staring down from their moon base at the tiers of hopefuls below. Little wonder, perhaps, up against this there might be a temptation to buckle in the foothills.
For Centre Court these are precious moments to have lost. Walking out in mid-afternoon, Federer had received less a round of applause more a hormonal groan of longing. But then it can be hard to resist that allure, the waft of Fedromones, the way Federer walks out on court like the man who invented walking, seeming to move through even a muggy south London day with less resistance than the standard-issue human.
He is still a sensual pleasure to watch with a poise that can suck the air out of his opponents. Here Federer went to 4-2 with a service game of viciously controlled slice and cut, making Dolgopolov leap and jerk like a marionette. “I love you Roger,” shouted one of Those Blokes in the crowd, to titters and flushes of sympathy, hands raised to the collective throat.
“Marry me Roger” another wag yelled as he served to go to 5-3. And frankly Federer could have just stayed out after his opponent had winced his way off and run up and down a bit, hit from one end, done some press-ups. Centre Court would have still purred and cooed and goggled in a lascivious hush.
Earlier it had been Djokovic’s turn to appear briefly centre stage. He had time to look encouragingly ruthless, the ball dispatched on that familiar crouching forehand with a cat-stretch of the shoulder blades, all braced tensile energy. But then Klizan did fade almost from the start. For a while it was like watching Djokovic play against a service machine, or a dalek.
The fact neither Djokovic nor Federer was stretched here might be felt later in the tournament. But perhaps not as keenly as it was by a Centre Court crowd robbed of its own afternoon of champion grace.
