Top seeds tumble out of Wimbledon tune-up
Murray, Wawrinka, Raonic fall in first round of Queen’s grass-court tournament
LONDON— Top-ranked Andy Murray headed a list of high-profile departures in the first round at Queen’s on Tuesday, with the Wimbledon champion losing to a player who found out he was competing only on the morning of the match.
Murray put in a sloppy and errorprone display in losing to 90thranked Jordan Thompson 7-6 (4), 6-2, joining Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic in getting eliminated on a day of shocks at the Wimbledon warm-up event. They were the top three seeds.
Thompson, who lost in the final round of qualifying on Sunday, stepped up to play Murray following the withdrawal early Tuesday of Aljaz Bedene because of a wrist injury. Thompson played the match of his life — but was given a helping hand by the erratic Murray, the defending and five-time champion in west London.
The Australian sealed victory with an ace down the middle.
“Definitely the biggest win of my career,” Thompson said. “I took each point at a time. I definitely didn’t expect to be winning here in straight sets. I just wanted to enjoy myself.”
Murray had planned to donate his winnings to victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy that has claimed the lives of 79 people. That donation could have topped $440,000 had he won the Wimbledon warm-up for the sixth straight year.
The second-seeded Wawrinka was beaten by big-serving Feliciano Lopez 7-6 (5), 7-5, with the Spanish player sealing victory off a net cord from a sliced backhand return.
Wawrinka, the runner-up to Rafael Nadal at the French Open, appeared to be struggling with a left knee injury in the second set.
While Wawrinka’s exit wasn’t too much of a surprise, given Lopez’s recent form and liking for grass, the early departure of third-seeded Raonic in the first match on Centre Court certainly was.
Raonic, last year’s runner-up at Queen’s and Wimbledon — both times to Murray — lost 7-6 (5), 7-6 (8) to No. 698-ranked Thanasi Kokkinakis, who was playing only his sixth singles match since November 2015 because of injury problems.
It was the first win over a top-10 opponent for the Australian, who trailed 6-3 in the second-set tiebreaker but won on his third match point with a backhand winner into the corner.
“It’s a big frustration,” said Raonic, who failed to convert any of his nine break-point opportunities. “Obviously it would have been a lot easier scheduling everything if I was to be here and have many more matches ahead of me.”
Kokkinakis played only one match in 2016 because of a shoulder problem, and missed most of this year because of an abdominal injury. He returned in May and played three events before Queen’s, with his ranking as low as No. 993 only last week. With files from the Washington Post