Novak Djokovic’s quarter-final with Felix Auger-Aliassime was stopped, and the seven-time Wimbledon champion was not shy to show his frustration. With the match locked at one set apiece, tournament referee Denise Parnell announced the Center Court roof would be closed at 7:40 pm, a decision Djokovic confronted her over directly courtside. 

“The other day you didn’t want to close it until 8:30. Now you want to close it. You don’t want to get to 8:30? It’s 7:40 now. We can play a whole another set outdoors. We’re an outdoor tournament,” Djokovic said. When the supervisor referenced Jannik Sinner’s earlier match, Djokovic shut the comparison down. “With Jannik, I don’t care what happens in his matches. I’m talking about our match right now,” he said.

He then pointed to a specific inconsistency from earlier in the tournament. “You remember the first round, you didn’t close it til like 8:20. Now you want to close it at 7:40. Where’s the consistency?” he added, before accusing officials of applying their own guidelines selectively. “You’re so proud of your rules and you’re not sticking to any kind of rules. You have no idea what the rule is.” Auger-Aliassime backed his opponent, also asking for the roof to remain open.

Djokovic won the opening set 7-6(10) after an 82-minute epic that included a medical timeout for a calf issue, before Auger-Aliassime levelled with a 6-3 second set. In the third set, the score is 1-1, and it took 34 minutes to reach that point, including the closing of the roof.

This is a developing story…