Don't Look Ahead in Anger

On Monday at Wimbledon, where a sudden injury changed everything, thinking too much about what could come next was off-limits.

WIMBLEDON, England — A Grand Slam event is a festival of overstimulation, with countless things competing for your possible attention at any given time. Should you be closely watching a match? Attending a press conference? Researching a story topic? Seeking an interesting voice for an interview in the player areas? Or actually writing—which is, ultimately, the actual job?

So when an announcement came over the speakers that Liudmila Samsonova was on her way to a press conference room following her fourth round win on Monday afternoon, I had a moment where nothing else was holding my focus, so I decided to attend. Samsonova was likely to play Iga Swiatek in the next round, and since Swiatek’s improvement on grass has been one of the biggest stories on the women’s side of Wimbledon this year, I was eager to ask her to assess Swiatek’s grass acumen.

“Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Her!”

But when I arrived at the interview room, an interview coordinator stopped me outside the door to tell me the conditions of entry: Samsonova—who was sitting just out of ear shot on a bench nearby—did not want anyone to tell her who she might be playing against in her long-awaited first major quarterfinal.

I probably wouldn’t have gone to the press conference if I knew it would come with preconditions, but I had already walked up a few flights of stairs to get there and it seemed silly to turn away.

After a few nice questions with the sweet and soft-spoken Samsonova on other topics gathered reporters could conjure—like her recent big win over Jessica Pegula in Berlin or having idolizing Maria Sharapova—I wanted to ask Samsonova why she had this policy, which she said she “always, always” had before matches, at least for a few years.

“It’s helping me mentally,” she said. “I don’t think about [the opponent] too early, because [if I do] I’m start burning my mind. I overthink, yeah.”

The handful of reporters present succeeded in not revealing Samsonova’s opponent to her during the press conference; she assured us that it’s fairly easy to avoid it on her phone, too.

“Social media, they don't care about me,” she said. “So honestly, I don't have this problem right now, so it's easy for me.”

If you’re reading this and tempted: please, don’t go telling Liudmila Samsonova who she plays next. She said she would probably find out the night before the match.

After Iga Swiatek booked her expected place in the quarterfinals against Samsonova, I was curious what she would think of her opponent’s policy.

“I need to know, I need to prepare” Swiatek said of imminent opponents.

Swiatek had already known before her press conference that she was playing Samsonova next.

“But she doesn’t know she’s playing me?” Swiatek asked.

When I explained that Samsonova said she didn’t want to “overthink it,” Swiatek said she understood.

“I get it,” Swiatek replied. “[But] we don’t have so many matches anymore to not know, kind of, I would say. You don’t have many options in the quarterfinals…Well, at some point she must know, right? Because she needs to prepare, right?”

“Eventually she’ll know,” I replied.

“I’ll tell her,” Swiatek replied, laughing.

This was the first time I could remember ever being stopped before being admitted into a press conference room, but there are players who have asked reporters not to tell them who they are playing next. Adrian Mannarino does it; even Serena Williams did it for a brief spell of her career.

I went to Ben Shelton’s press conference soon after Samsonova’s, and was curious if he could relate to her wishes.

Shelton said he was generally fine with knowing, but didn’t want to marinate on an opponent for an extended number of days.

“I don't want to know like, six days out, how it is at [when I have a first round bye at an extended] Masters,” Shelton replied. “I feel like [that’s] getting to a place where you're overly consumed with who play or who you could be playing in the future, for some people that works great. I talk to Taylor Fritz: He's like, ‘Ooooh, I got this guy in the quarters!’—but it works for him. I think everybody is completely different; that wasn't a shot at Taylor at all. For me, I’ve got to kind of not think about who I'm playing, especially in later rounds. I only want to know the round that I'm going into. I want to know maybe two days out. So once you start playing at slams, you kind of know who you got, two days out, after each match. For me, that's perfect: enough time to watch tape, think about it, talk about it with my team, but also not dwell on it.”

Shelton was speaking as his next opponent was still unknown, but it looked like it might be someone unexpected: Grigor Dimitrov was up a set on top-seeded Jannik Sinner, and was serving for the second set.

Later in his press conference, Shelton got asked a quite strangely worded question from a television about the possible eventuality:

“When you think about what's ahead—and realize that, at this moment, Jannik Sinner might be out—if that does happen, how would you describe the opportunity ahead for you?”

Shelton paused for a few seconds.

“Um, but they’re in the second set?” he replied.

“Dimitrov’s up a break, serving for the second set,” the producer replied—but by the time he had finished that score update, Sinner had won a break point. “Nevermind!”

As it happened, Dimitrov would break right back moments later, and take a two-sets-to-none over the top seed.

Upsetting Scenes

I knew Sinner-Dimitrov was where all attention had to be in this moment, so I settled into a seat on Centre Court for the third set—which began after a delay of about 13 minutes to close the roof—eager to see if the veteran could pull off a major, late-career victory

But suddenly, after two holds of serve apiece, it was clear the match was abruptly over.

After hitting a 96 mph ace out wide past Sinner’s forehand to hold for 2-2 in the third, 34-year-old Dimitrov immediately grabbed his right pec with his left hand, crouched to the ground, and then sat down on the grass completely.

Dimitrov had rubbed his right pec a bit after the previous point—a missed backhand volley attempt off of a hard Sinner return—and as well as when he stepped to the line to serve again. Hitting one more serve seemed to have caused a pretty awful acute injury.

“My pec,” Dimitrov explained, wincing and laughing ruefully once Jannik Sinner jogged had over to him, soon joined in the middle of the court by two tournament medical staffers.

Sinner and the trainers walked Dimitrov to his chair to undergo evaluations, which he couldn’t come close to passing: he couldn’t lift his right arm at all, and even deep breaths were painful.

“My pec is gone,” Dimitrov told them.

As the crowd murmured, Roger Federer blankly stared at Dimitrov’s pain from the Royal Box.

Consultations seemed helpless; the trainers suggested Dimitrov could try leaving the court—unusual for an upper body injury—and he reluctantly agreed to follow them.

Sinner put on a jacket and half-heartedly hit serves for a couple minutes until Dimitrov returned, shook his head, and made clear his 59th appearance in a Grand Slam tournament was over.

After they walked to the net together, Dimitrov could barely even raise his right arm to shake the umpire’s hand, using his left hand to lifting up his right wrist as he shook his head and tears welled in his eyes. It was, improbably and excruciatingly, the fifth straight Grand Slam event in a row for Dimitrov which ended in his mid-match retirement. Given the difficulty of pectoral injuries, and Dimitrov’s age and recent brittleness, there’s a real fear here that this could be a difficult injury for him to return from.

“Ruined my life this thing for the last five years,” Thanasi Kokkinakis, who has also struggled with a pectoral injury, tweeted Monday. “He gotta take time to get it right.”

Any major injury is difficult to witness, but Dimitrov is one of the most beloved players on tour both for his game and his kindness, and seeing him broken put a further pall over Wimbledon as dusk fell on Monday.

Sinner, who advanced by the very atypical scoreline of 3-6, 5-7, 2-2 (ret.), stopped to help Dimitrov pack his racquets into his bag. It was the second mid-match retirement in the eight fourth round matches on the men’s side, following Jordan Thompson stopping down 1-6, 0-3 to Taylor Fritz.

But while Thompson was never able to get a foothold, Dimitrov was nearly running away with a career-highlight victory when his body betrayed him once more.

“I don’t take this as a win at all,” Sinner said in his on-court interview. “This is just a very unfortunate moment to witness for all of us.”

Sinner’s Own Wounds

Though it was nowhere near as immediately debilitating as Dimitrov’s, Sinner had suffered his own acute injury in the match as well, slipping and falling in the opening game and appearing to jam his right elbow.

Sinner’s shots were less effective than usual for the rest of the match, and he had his elbow treated during a medical timeout midway through the second set.

“I felt it quite a lot, especially [on] serve and forehand.” Sinner said of his elbow. “I could feel it. So let’s see. Tomorrow we are going to check to see how it is, and then we see.”

When I asked Sinner about how he might be affected by not having his own physio at this tournament—having fired his personal training staff on the eve of Wimbledon—Sinner said he was in safe hands with tour and tournament personnel, but made it clear he might need real help.

“Here they have good ATP physios, in any case,” Sinner said. “The doctor's good. As I said, tomorrow we are going to check with MRI to see if there's something serious, and then we try to adjust it.”

Further Listening

I discussed the grim Dimitrov-Sinner scenes and other Wimbledon fourth round topis with friend of the show Ricky Dimon on the latest episode of No Challenges Remaining:

And for for more fun, I was also delighted yesterday to guest on James Gray’s Tennis Unfiltered with James Gray, discussing other events of the tournament, particularly the technology collapse on Centre Court during Pavlyuchenkova-Kartal which I wrote about on Bounces last time.

Thanks for reading Bounces! -Ben