Wimbledon briefing: Monday recap, day nine order of play and ‘nightmare’ Norrie

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The quarter-finals begin on Tuesday, with women’s world number one Aryna Sabalenka opening play on Centre Court before Britain’s last remaining singles hope Cameron Norrie tackles defending men’s champion Carlos Alcaraz.

Here, the PA news agency looks back at Monday’s action and previews day nine of the Championships.

Djokovic wakes up to down De Minaur

Novak Djokovic stretches in-between games
Novak Djokovic had to overcome a shaky start (Mike Egerton/PA)

Novak Djokovic recovered from his worst first set at Wimbledon to battle past Alex De Minaur in four sets and reach a 16th quarter-final in SW19.

The seven-time champion made 16 unforced errors, including four double faults, and dropped serve three times as he lost the first set 6-1.

Bu the Serbian remains on a semi-final collision course with Jannik Sinner, who appeared to be heading for an early exit before Grigor Dimitrov suffered a heartbreaking injury.

The 34-year-old Bulgarian was two sets up and playing some inspired tennis when, at 2-2 in the third set, he clutched his chest after serving an ace and was forced to retire injured.

World number one Sinner, who helped Dimitrov pack his rackets away and carried his bag off court, said: “I don’t take this as a win at all. This is just a very unfortunate moment to witness for all of us.”

In the zone

Mirra Andreeva standing in front of the scoreboard
Mirra Andreeva did not immediately realise she had won (John Walton/PA)

Mirra Andreeva was so focused on continually winning the next point that she did not realise she had won.

The 18-year-old Russian swatted aside Emma Navarro in straight sets to reach her first Wimbledon quarter-final.

But, in front of her hero Roger Federer, she was oblivious to the fact the umpire was announcing her as the winner.

“I kept telling myself I’m not the one who is up on the score, I am the one who is down,” she explained. “That helped me to stay focused and in the end I completely forgot the score.

“I’m happy that I did it because I think I would have been three times more nervous on a match point.”

AI here to stay

Umpire Nico Helwerth on the phone after the line-calling technology failed on Centre Court
Umpire Nico Helwerth on the phone after the line-calling technology failed on Centre Court (Adam Davy/PA)

Wimbledon bosses are “deeply disappointed” by Sunday’s electronic line calling failure but insist it will not happen again.

All England Club chief executive Sally Bolton said: “We did a full review of all of our systems and processes to check all of those kinds of things and to make sure that, both historically and moving forward, we have made the appropriate changes that we needed to make. So we’re absolutely confident in the system.”

Organisers later clarified the changes that have been made, with a spokesman saying: “Following our review, we have removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking. This error cannot now be repeated.”

Match of the day

Cameron Norrie holds his arms aloft in celebration
Cameron Norrie takes on the defending Wimbledon champion in the quarter-finals (Jordan Pettitt/PA)

Cameron Norrie faces the ultimate Wimbledon challenge as he aims to dethrone defending champion Carlos Alcaraz.

The British number three is through to the quarter-finals for the first time since he reached the last four in 2022, which was the last time Spanish superstar Alcaraz lost a match in SW19.

Since then Norrie has dropped from eight in the world to a low of 91 while Alcaraz, 22, has won two Wimbledons, two French Opens and a US Open.

But Alcaraz is taking nothing for granted, insisting facing Norrie on home soil is “almost a nightmare”.

Order of play

tournament visualization

Centre Court (from 1.30pm)
Aryna Sabalenka (1) v Laura Siegemund
Cameron Norrie v Carlos Alcaraz (2)

Court One (from 1pm)
Taylor Fritz (5) v Karen Khachanov (17)
Amanda Anisimova (13) v Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Weather watch

Sunny with highs of 25C, according to the Met Office.