Clampdown on quitters who cash in
Wimbledon and the other Grand Slams are moving to try to prevent a repeat of the first-round ‘injury’ withdrawals that blighted the biggest tournaments this year.
There will be threats of fines for those who go on court knowing they are not fully fit, plus a financial incentive to stop the practice of picking up loser’s first-round money.
As Sportsmail revealed during Wimbledon, there was considerable anger among the game’s hierarchy at the bad look presented by seven male players and a female player retiring during the first round of The Championships — and a resolve to do something about it. The four Grand Slams collectively announced yesterday that any qualified player already on site, but who withdraws before the draw, will receive 50 per cent of the prize money, with the other half going to a ‘lucky loser’ from the preliminary event who would replace them.
There is the threat that any player who ‘competes in the first round main draw singles and retires or performs below professional standards, may now be subject to a fine up to firstround prize money’.
Whether that nebulous wording would stand up to legal scrutiny must be open to question.
The matter has been brought to a head after two players, Alexandr dolgopolov and martin Klizan, retired on Centre Court on the same day in the first round. each player took home £35,000 in prize money.
Predictably, few of the recent innovations trialled at the nextGen finals in milan have made it into the rulebook, but umpires will be told to strictly enforce warm-up limits.
While Wimbledon has resisted introducing a ‘shot clock’, the Australian open will experiment with having a timer enforcing a 25-second maximum between points.
All Grand Slams will, from 2019, revert to having 16 seeds, cut from 32. The move has been a long time coming and is in response to the trend of recent years with uncompetitive early round wins for the top players.
but there has been no move to introduce wider innovations regarding on-court coaching or tackling the scourge of false toilet breaks, medical timeouts and serial grunting. The duchess of Kent has paid tribute to 1998 Wimbledon winner Jana novotna, who has died of cancer aged 49. She described her as a ‘courageous, sweet lady with a wonderful sense of humour.’
Grand Slams to cut winnings as ‘injured’ losers play doubles Sportsmail reported the story on July 6 during Wimbledon