Tsonga’s Wimbledon hopes in balance following Queen’s exit

LONDON: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga’s Wimbledon hopes suffered a double blow yesterday after he injured his finger badly during a shock 7-6, 3-6, 7-6 third round defeat by Queen’s Club debutant Ivan Dodig.
Tsonga joined Andy Murray on the Queen’s Club scrapheap, meaning the top two seeds and last year’s finalists have both been eliminated before the quarter-finals, but more worryingly for the Frenchman was the injury which could scupper his Wimbledon participation.
“I think it’s serious. I haven’t had it examined yet but it sounds very bad. I felt like I broke something or I stretched a lot of ligaments,” a somber Tsonga told reporters.
Asked at which point he suffered the injury, he added: “I just fell down. I just fell down. That’s it. I fell down on it, and that’s it.” Tsonga was seen diving around court, and at one point after falling flat on his stomach, he even showed off his bulging biceps by doing some push-ups behind the baseline.
However, he could have done with preserving his energy as unheralded Croatian Dodig squeezed into the last eight, where he will meet 2010 champion Sam Querrey.
Grass-loving Spaniard Feliciano Lopez also made an early exit after he was beaten 7-6, 7-6 by South African Kevin Anderson.
Murray’s conqueror Nicolas Mahut was unable to capitalize on his unexpected passage to the third round after he was tame 7-6, 6-4 by little-known Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov.