Canadian Denis Shapovalov, the number 27 seed at Wimbledon, was knocked out by Argentina’s Mariano Navone in the first round.<\/p>\n
He was broken six times by his opponent as he suffered his earliest exit at the tournament since 2019.<\/p>\n
“The balls are the worst, the grass tour has turned into a joke,” he said after his defeat.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t grass anymore, the court is slower than a clay one. It’s not even grass.”<\/p>\n
Two-time champion Petra Kvitova said things had changed over the years.<\/p>\n
“I’m not sure if it’s only grass,” she said after her final appearance at the All England Club ended in a defeat by 10th seed Emma Navarro. <\/p>\n
“Maybe it’s the balls, as well. Overall it’s getting slower.”<\/p>\n
Eight top-10 seeded players have exited in the first round – the highest tally at a single Grand Slam event in the Open era.<\/p>\n
Among those to be knocked out was American third seed Jessica Pegula, who said the courts at Wimbledon “felt different” but added: “That’s grass \u2013 they’re all kind of different. It’s a living surface, they’re not going to play the same.”<\/p>\n
Poland’s former world number one Iga Swiatek, who beat Russian Polina Kudermetova 7-5 6-1 in her first-round match, feels the Wimbledon courts are playing slower but expects things to change in the coming days.<\/p>\n
“It [Wimbledon] was slower, and kind of more slippery with the movement,” she said. <\/p>\n
“But also with the heat and everything the ball bounced differently than how it will in the coming days, so I’m not really focusing on that. <\/p>\n
“With the change of the weather we will have to adjust every day to the different conditions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadian Denis Shapovalov, the number 27 seed at Wimbledon, was knocked out by Argentina’s Mariano Navone in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-231084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114781771758423667","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}