LONDON -- Not even a week into the Wimbledon fortnight, the All England Club has a grass problem.
It began, publicly at least, with screams for help. In the third set of her singles match against Sorana Cirstea on Thursday, Bethanie Mattek-Sands slipped to the ground, grabbed her right knee and began shouting, "Help me! Help me! Help me!" She was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, and as of Friday was still receiving scans to determine the extent of her injury.
After the match, Cirstea, still visibly emotional, told media she'd never seen such a gruesome injury and then opened the door for an onslaught of complaints about the playing surface at Wimbledon, specifically on Court 17 (where Mattek-Sands was playing) and Court 18.
"Her knee was in a very weird position," Cirstea said. "I've never seen anything like this, probably except in the movies. We all know grass; it's quite dangerous sometimes. Especially as you get through the days, it's less grass and more sand. Then, also it was very dry today because it was quite hot. I also had two quite tough balls where I almost fell over."
Two games into a singles match on Court 18, France's Kristina Mladenovic and American Alison Riske asked their referee if they could stop play "in case something bad happens," Mladenovic said in her postmatch news conference. The women were told they must continue playing. "The baseline where we are running, it's very slippery. There's no grass. I don't know how to describe it. It's not even clay. It's not flat. There was a huge hole on the side where ... the referee came and took pictures of it. I feel it's totally different than the previous years."
Mladenovic, who lost in three sets, said she twisted her ankle during warm-ups. Then she slipped during play, injured her knee and planned to get an MRI. She said the condition of the grass was becoming a topic of discussion in the ladies locker room.
Once Mladenovic's comments became public, the All England Club released a statement regarding the condition of Court 18: "Grand Slam Supervisor [Pam Whytcross] and the Assistant Referee [Denise Parnell] both attended Court 18 during the Mladenovic vs. Riske match, inspected it and in their experienced view judged it playable as per normal. The Head of Courts and Horticulture [Neil Stubley] and the Head Groundsman [Grant Cantin] were also in attendance.
"The court preparation has been to exactly the same meticulous standard as in previous years," the statement continued. "Grass is a natural surface and it is usual for the baselines to start to be showing signs of wear and tear four days into The Championships. The AELTC and Sports Turf Research Institute [STRI] take hardness readings every morning in order to ensure that the courts have the right level of moisture and are playing consistently. No readings of any significance have been taken from Court 18. We will continue to monitor these readings and adjust our care plan for the grass appropriately."
On Friday, the All England Club decided to close the Centre Court roof until noon in order to protect the court from the blazing sun. The last time the roof was closed for a reason other than rainfall was 2015, signaling to players that their complaints were being heard.
Repeated requests to interview Stubley and Cantin were denied.
In an interview with The Independent days before the start of the tournament, Mark Ferguson, the research manager at Sports Turf Research Institute in West Yorkshire, which tests and grows the perennial rye grass used at Wimbledon, described the importance of maintaining a consistent playing surface, despite the weather.
"Wimbledon has to feel like coming home for the players," Ferguson said in the article. "It has to feel like Wimbledon; it has to feel just the same."
On Friday morning, Ferguson was back on site at Wimbledon, working with Stubley and his crew to maintain the courts before play began. Each night, based on the readings, they water the courts before covering them for the night.
The start of the tournament was pushed back one week this year to accommodate a longer grass court tuneup season before Wimbledon. That sounded great in theory, but this week has seen some of the hottest temperatures of the summer, with the mercury reaching 88 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, a day that saw 60 spectators treated by on-site medical staff. And those rainstorms that are as predictably a part of Wimbledon as the lines for strawberries and cream never materialized, making the job of the grounds crew more difficult.
On Friday, despite the work the grounds crew put in, the complaints continued from players who weren't fortunate enough to play on Centre Court.
"I think the courts this year are really, really bad," said Fabio Fognini, who lost in four sets against Andy Murray. "But they do the best that they can -- is not their fault. I think this year was really sunny days, so the grass is not really good like last year's."
Britain's Aljaz Bedene also expressed concerns after his loss to Gilles Muller.
"Specifically, on that game when I was serving to go up 30-love, I think I fell twice," he said. "I started to feel my hip again, which is never good. It was a little bit slippery. I don't know if was it because of the shoes. I guess it was slippery to everyone."