LONDON: Seventh seed Hubert Hurkacz became the third men’s top-eight player to make an early exit as he retired from his second-round clash against Frenchman Arthur Fils with a knee injury on Thursday.
Having made a slow start, Hurkacz was on course to level the match at two sets apiece when he dived for a volley at the net in the fourth set tiebreak to go 8-7 up, but landed badly and stayed on the turf to receive treatment on his right knee.
Hurkacz limped on after a lengthy medical timeout before producing another desperate dive shortly after, but his movement was severely hampered. He threw in the towel at 7-6(2) 6-4 2-6 6-6 having gone down 9-8 in the tiebreak.
“It’s very tough to win a match like this against a friend,” said Fils in his on-court interview. “We were playing super good in the fourth set. We had some great points and he was jumping everywhere. I’m really sorry for him and I hope he will recover very quickly.
“Me, I’m focused on the next round.” The big-serving Pole, who beat Roger Federer to reach the 2021 semi-finals and took a set off seven-times champion Novak Djokovic in the last 16 last year, had primed himself for more major damage after a run to the Halle final last month.
Hurkacz showed flashes of his best form after a lacklustre effort in the first two sets but could not see off the 20-year-old Fils on a sunny afternoon, joining sixth seed Andrey Rublev and eighth seed Casper Ruud in making a premature exit.
Fils became the youngest Frenchman to reach the Wimbledon third round since 2005, when both Richard Gasquet and Gael Monfils did so as teenagers but his celebration was understandably muted. Fils next faces Russian Roman Safiullin in his 10th tour-level match on grass. “It’s only my second year on grass. Okay, I’m playing better than last year, but I still have so much to improve,” Fils said.
Djokovic survives spirited challenge from British wildcard Fearnley
Even though Novak Djokovic was nursing a dodgy right knee, toppling him at Wimbledon was never going to be easy for a Briton ranked 277th and so it proved as the Serb huffed and puffed into the third round with a 6-3 6-4 5-7 7-5 win over Jacob Fearnley.
The wildcard, who was ranked outside the world’s top 500 just a month ago before shooting up almost 250 spots after winning a second tier Challenger event in Nottingham, will take away many memorable moments from his Centre Court debut.
He is unlikely to forget the high-risk, high-reward strategy he employed in the final game of the third set, which ended with Djokovic hacking a forehand wide to surrender his serve and the set - to the delight of the hollering crowd.
But all the heroics from a journeyman Scot, who until this week had never won a main tour match or even competed at a Grand Slam, were simply not enough to tame a player chasing a record-extending 372nd Grand Slam match win.
A forehand winner sealed Djokovic his passage into round three and kept him on course to win a record 25th Grand Slam title.