{"id":906694,"date":"2026-07-02T04:21:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T04:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/906694\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T04:21:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T04:21:18","slug":"djokovic-pranks-ball-girl-apologizes-on-centre-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/906694\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovic Pranks Ball Girl, Apologizes on Centre Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Novak Djokovic added a bit of theater to Wimbledon&#8217;s Centre Court on Wednesday\u2014and briefly spooked a ball girl in the process, if not fans. After taking a two-set lead over Stefanos Tsitsipas, the 24-time Grand Slam winner asked a ball girl to help cut tape from his shoulder, then pretended her scissors had cut him instead, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/sport\/tennis\/novak-djokovic-wimbledon-ball-girl-37375142\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mirror <\/a>reports. Cameras caught her looking stunned as Djokovic feigned pain before quickly cracking up, as BBC broadcaster Clare Balding noted on air that the &#8220;poor girl&#8221; looked &#8220;absolutely terrified.&#8221; She appeared shocked, then relieved to learn it was a joke, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gbnews.com\/sport\/tennis\/novak-djokovic-pranks-ball-girl-wimbledon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GB News<\/a>.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Djokovic addressed the moment in his on-court interview after the match, per the Mirror, apologizing if he&#8217;d scared her and calling it &#8220;not that great of a joke&#8221; but something that helped him relax. He conceded that &#8220;these kinds of things surface when you are two sets to love up rather than two sets to love down.&#8221; The 37-year-old had little trouble beyond that, dispatching Tsitsipas 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 under the Centre Court roof. The seven-time Wimbledon champion moves on to face No. 25 seed Arthur Rinderknech in the third round on Friday.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Novak Djokovic added a bit of theater to Wimbledon&#8217;s Centre Court on Wednesday\u2014and briefly spooked a ball&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":906695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[48],"tags":[6531,9125,95547,62,21411,1464,67,132,68,2071],"class_list":["post-906694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-bbc","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-prank","tag-sports","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","tag-tennis","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wimbledon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116848472682273359","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}