Players and spectators alike are no longer required to provide proof of vaccination or negative tests at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. There is also a tight crowd in the professional area, especially on the first days of the tournament. “When it rains, all the players and all the guests are in the restaurant and there isn’t a lot of seating,” reported Andrea Petkovic after her first round defeat by the 4:6, 3:6 against Viktorija Golubic from Switzerland.
Also for the German Wimbledon debutants Nastasja Schunk (4: 6, 2: 6 against the Romanian Mihaela Buzarnescu), Tamara Korpatsch (7: 6 (9: 7), 5: 7, 2: 6 against the Brit Heather Watson), Daniel Altmaier (3:6, 5:7, 5:7 against Mikael Ymer of Sweden) and Nicola Kuhn (3:6, 7:6 (7:1), 3:6, 2:6 against Brandon Nakashima from the USA ) came the end. As the last German on Tuesday, Dominik Koepfer lost 4: 6, 5: 7, 6: 7 (1: 7) against the Colombian Daniel Galan.
Nadal also struggled
This means that a total of five German tennis professionals, led by Angelique Kerber, are in the second round and all of them are back in action on Wednesday. Serena Williams failed with the 5: 7, 6: 1, 6: 7 (7:10) against the French outsider Harmony Tan in her first singles after a one-year break. 22-time Grand Slam tournament winner Rafael Nadal of Spain also struggled but won in four hard-fought sets against Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo.
Petkovic also spoke out in favor of returning a measure in view of his own negative corona experiences at the French Open. “If I had something to say, I would reintroduce the mask indoors,” said the 34-year-old, but also admitted: “It’s difficult because people also want to go back to normal life. It was real now hard, two years, I can understand that.”
The Darmstadt native had been infected with the corona virus around a month before Wimbledon. “I’ve been really sick for three days and then five days flat, I couldn’t have played like that,” said Petkovic. She assumes that she got infected in Paris, where for the first time there was no longer a mask requirement in the cabin. She initially wore a mask for the first three days. “Then people gave me such stupid looks because I was the only one.”
In Wimbledon, too, up to 42,000 spectators crowded the facility without masks, and interviews with the professionals were conducted in narrow, windowless rooms. The number of positive tests in England had risen by more than a third to over 100,000 in seven days in the previous week.