Tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands on Thursday "suffered a brutal injury while playing a singles match at Wimbledon," and her opponent, Sorana Cîrstea, is "criticizing the response of emergency officials, who seemed slow to rush to help," according to Greg Hadley of MCCLATCHY NEWS. Mattek-Sands "approached the net to return a shot" when her knee "buckled beneath her and she fell to the grass turf, screaming in pain." She could "clearly be heard screaming, 'please help me, please, please'" on ESPN's live coverage. The broadcast "cut away from Mattek-Sands before medics could be seen reaching her, but there seemed to be at least a 15-second delay between the moment she collapsed" and when she "first received medical attention." Cîrstea after the match said, "It took a really long time not only for the stretcher to get there but I would say she was on the ground from 10 to 15 minutes and for me that is really long" (MCCLATCHY NEWS, 7/6). REUTERS' Mitch Phillips reported Cîrstea said, "You wonder what would have happened if it was a heart issue or something like this." The All England Lawn Tennis Club tweeted, "The response to Court 17 was within one minute, by a qualified ambulance technician" (REUTERS, 7/6). In London, Jacob Steinberg reported there was "concern on one of the outside show courts" in the match between Kristina Mladenovic and Alison Riske about the playing surface. Mladenovic in her post-match press conference revealed "both players had unsuccessfully asked the umpire to stop play because they felt the court's surface was unsafe." She said that there was "no more grass and even a hole in the ground on Court 18." Mladenovic said, "The color of the court, the fact that there’s no more grass, the fact the baseline where we are running, it’s very slippery. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not even clay" (GUARDIAN, 7/6).
MORE CRITICISM: The BBC reported Andy and Jamie Murray are the latest players to criticize the state of the courts at Wimbledon. Andy Murray said that the court conditions were "not as good as previous years," while Jamie added that they "weren't good." Fabio Fognini went further, saying that they are "really, really bad." Temperatures reached 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in the first week at Wimbledon, with little rain. Head groundsman Neil Stubley said, "Obviously we're dealing with the extreme heat, which we're not used to every single Championships. There's not a doubt in our minds that the courts will be as good as they need to be for the end of the Championships." Jamie Murray said, "Wimbledon think they're the best tournament in the world, so they need to be held to those standards, and I don't think that this year the courts were [of] as high a standard as they could have been" (BBC, 7/8). REUTERS' Simon Evans reported Stubley said, "Obviously, we listen to players, because their feedback is important. But the data shows to us those courts that are in question are within range of the other courts, and they are within the range of previous years. ... We set them up to the exact standard that we've done in many previous years" (REUTERS, 7/8).
