New roof may not get rollout as heatwave hits London (Wimbledon Diary)

LONDON - The brand-new unused Wimbledon roof may go through the entire fortnight without any real-world use with hot and dry weather forecast for much of the concluding week of the Championships.

Players have already put the sophisticated structure - reported cost up to 120 million dollars - out of mind as the grass-court Grand Slam gets to the business end.

Andy Roddick says players are not speculating about who might be first to actually play a match with the translucent structure shut.

“That conversation would be kind of a short one. There’s a roof. If it rains, it closes. Beyond that, we might as well guess what colour socks someone is wearing.

“I think the common joke has been that they haven’t had to use it yet. All this money and the weather’s been nice.”

Andy Murray was wondering for a few minutes at the weekend if he might be the first to get the honour as some dark clouds and some light drops rolled in during his third-round defeat of Serb Viktor Troicki.

But they were only temporary. “It would have been a nice bit of history, I guess, (to play) the first match to play under the roof,” said the third seed.

“I wasn’t that worried by it, I enjoy playing indoors. Once it started to come down, a little bit heavier, it was sort of 5-3 in the third set. So, obviously wanted to finish it before the rain came.” said the straight-set winner.

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Former great Evert wonders what the grunting is all about

Chris Evert has joined the anti-grunting crusade as the elder tennis generation tries to figure out what all the noise on court is about.

“Steffi Graf hit the ball a ton and she didn’t grunt,” said the American, visiting Sydney with golfer husband Greg Norman, “There were a lot of players, hard-hitting players, and you never heard a peep out of them.”

The three-time Wimbledon champion has not fronted up at the All England club this year, but has still joined in with former rival Martina Navratilova in criticizing the increasing decibel level.

“It is distracting when you are hearing this and I think the grunts are getting louder and more shrill now with the current players,” she said.

“The next time you watch say a Maria Sharapova - the grunting is consistent except all of a sudden when she has a set up to hit a winner.”

Evert added that the distracting grunt comes “before they hit the shot.”

“That’s the first thing you hear and you are thrown off guard as a player. Before you know the ball gets past you.”

Navratilova, who won Wimbledon nine times, has labelled today’s grunting as a form of cheating, saying it should be banned.