Ex-Wimbledon referee recalls Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic disagreement

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Former Wimbledon referee Andrew Jarrett once found himself at the centre of a disagreement between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, who were battling it out for a place in the final back in 2018. Jarrett oversaw the running of the tournament between 2006 and 2019 and was also in charge of controlling the Centre Court roof in the event of an issue with lighting or bad weather.

One particularly controversial moment saw the roof closed during the late session when Djokovic was facing Nadal in the semi-finals at Wimbledon five years ago. The Serb was leading by two sets to one before play was suspended for the evening. The match resumed the following day, although Jarrett made the call to keep the roof closed despite the sun beaming down on Centre Court.

The decision irked Nadal, who wanted the cover to be retracted, but Jarrett chose not to give in to the Spaniard’s demands after failing to get Djokovic to agree to having the roof opened.

“Perhaps the biggest issue was getting the terms of engagement [of the roof] agreed, then making people understand why decisions were made,” wrote Jarrett in his new book, Championship Points, as reported by the Daily Mail.

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“The convention was if you started a match like that you finished it, though the following year that was changed. I thought the fairest thing was to see if both players could agree to it being reopened, but it wasn’t a great surprise that they had differing views on that.”

Nadal went on to vent his fury in his post-match press conference after he was eventually beaten by Djokovic, with the Manacor native telling reporters that he could not understand why the roof stayed closed in the sunshine despite the match having started under the cover the previous evening.

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“It’s an outdoor tournament,” fumed Nadal. “OK, we start indoors. What I don’t understand is, today, we could have started outdoors. Today we continued undercover because we started undercover. I don’t think it’s right, it’s an outdoor tournament. If the previous part of the match started with the roof on, there was logic but I don’t understand why it had to be closed.”

Djokovic, meanwhile, held an opposing view to Nadal after his victory as he said: “The tournament organisers and referees said that the roof has to be closed because we started the match with the roof closed. They told us we had to play under the roof. I was for the roof because we started to play under it, I wanted to play in the same conditions.”

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