French seed Gilles Simon crashed out of the men’s singles after threatening to sue umpire John Blom for not stopping play during drizzle and then blasted the tournament for allowing action to continue in what he said were dangerous conditions.
The world No 20 was beaten 6-3, 7-6, 3-6, 6-4 by a resurgent Grigor Dimitrov, who upset Andy Murray two years ago to reach the semi-finals, but who has experienced some dire form since.
Although Simon credited the Bulgarian for his win, he didn’t hold back in venting his spleen over the weather. During the match he said to Blom: ‘I don’t want to play when it’s raining on grass. That’s it. If I play and get injured, I will sue you and you will pay.’
Afterwards he said: ‘I feel one day I’m going to get injured on slippery grass. I’m going to sue everyone in the stadium.
‘I’m just going to tell you what the supervisor told me, and I let you decide how you feel when someone is telling you this straight into your face.
‘He told me, “It’s raining but the water is not going to the ground. Like it’s really light rain and it’s there and it stays in the air and it’s flying away. So the grass is not wet.” So in the match you can see I’m p****d, yes, I’m p****d because I want to destroy him. That’s how it is.
‘They always force you to play. You can’t say anything.’
He said he hopes to raise the issue with the ATP Player Council — which includes Murray — where Simon will also share his dislike of equal prize money for men and women.
‘You have a large majority that is against equal prize money and you have a few players that are in favour of it. And Andy is just one of these players,’ he added.
Dimitrov arrived at the tournament having lost his first match at six consecutive tournaments.
Two years ago he was the rising star who downed the home hero and defending champion Murray, but has fallen to No 37 in the world from a high of No 8.
‘With each match you get more confident,’ he said. ‘You start to feel the grass, your movement, your shots. Everything becomes very natural. You get in a good rhythm. So that gives you that calmness when you come out on the court.’
Viktor Troicki has called for the Hawk-Eye review system to be installed on all courts after an astonishing on-court meltdown.
The No 25 seed was left screaming in frustration at the end of his five-set, second-round defeat by Albert Ramos-Vinolas. Serving for the match, Ramos-Vinolas hit a serve which was judged by official Damiano Torella to be in. When Troicki realised the ball had been called in, he screamed ‘No!’ before taking the ball off the ball boy and showing it to Torella, asking him to ‘look at it’ for a lack of chalk from the line. Troicki later said: ‘If we are playing tennis with such a bad chair umpire, we should have Hawk-Eye.’ – Daily Mail