LONDON _ In the end, the elbow pain was just too much for Novak Djokovic.
The Serbian star, seeded No. 2 at Wimbledon, pulled out of his quarterfinal match against Tomas Berdych on Wednesday, two games into the second set.
"It's the elbow that already keeps bothering for over a year-and-a-half, actually," said Djokovic, who lost the first set 6-7 (2) and had fallen behind 2-0 in the second. "It's unfortunate that I had to finish Wimbledon, Grand Slam, this way. I mean, if someone feels bad about it, it's me."
Three of the tournament's top four seeds have been eliminated, with No. 4 Rafael Nadal losing Monday in the fourth round, and No. 1 Andy Murray losing in a Wednesday quarterfinal.
Djokovic said it "didn't help at all" that his match Monday was postponed until Tuesday because Nadal's match on Court 1 was nearly five hours. Djokovic, who was scheduled to play on the same court, had wanted his match to be moved to Centre Court, where he could have played under the lights. Regardless, he had to play on back-to-back days.
"As an athlete, one way or another, at a certain stage of your career, you're going to experience these kind of things," he said. "Injuries are part of this sport, unfortunately. Professional tennis is getting very physical in the last couple of years. It's not easy to kind of play on the highest level throughout the entire season, then be able to do that over and over again every season, and then stay healthy.
"Obviously, we do everything in our power. That's why we have huge amount of people around us in our teams, to make sure that we cover every field or expertise that we possibly can so we can perform as best we can. At the end of the day, we're all humans."
