Rafael Nadal said that Wimbledon officials have disregarded the players at this year´s Wimbledon. The players had started with the knock-up on Saturday evening, enduring seven rain breaks across five days, before Nadal won 6-4 6-4 6-7 (7-9) 4-6 7-5. But the Spaniard was unhappy with how the weather situation had been dealt with by WImbledon officials.
"They did not think about the players" was Rafael Nadal’s comments after his rain-interrupted win over Robin Soderling.
"I don't understand why we don't play on Sunday when the weather was OK. It was so much better than yesterday, Monday and today too. I don't understand why they cancelled yesterday, when at 8.10 PM the sunshine is here for one hour so we can play.”
Eventually Nadal finished what he described as the toughest match of his career by winning the fifth set on Wednesday. He saved a break point before converting his fifth match point in game four of the day.
It had been a bad-tempered clash, with Robin Soderling mimicking Rafael at one stage and the pair barely shaking hands at the end.
"In the locker room, for other players he's not the best guy," said Rafael Nadal, who moaned that Soderling had not raised his hand to apologise after a lucky net-cord.
At one point Soderling failed to ask if Nadal was alright when the Spaniard fell over and he refused to make eye contact when shaking hands.
Elsewhere, Novak Djokovic beat Nicolas Kiefer in the final third-round match.
The two resumed at one set all and fourth seed Djokovic took control, breaking twice to wrap up the third set.
The Serb missed several break points in the fourth and was taken to a tie-break before winning 7-6 (7-4) 6-7 (6-8) 6-2 7-6 (7-5), and he faces Lleyton Hewitt in round four.
Sportbet.com has posted Wimbledon odds on the Men's Singles Match Ups for July 5th, 2007 at 7:00 AM EST:
Nikolay Davydenko: +160
Marcos Baghdatis: -210
Lleyton Hewitt: -135
Novak Djokovic: +105
Tomas Berdych: -360
Jonas Bjorkman: +270
Mikhail Youzhny: +175
Rafael Nadal: -225
