LONDON \u2014 Top-ranked Jannik Sinner is feeling optimistic about his Wimbledon title defence after sweating through an exhibition match in a heatwave Wednesday and confirming he underwent testing following his physical meltdown at the French Open.<\/p>\n
The Italian star hasn’t entered any tour-level events in the buildup to the grass-court Grand Slam, which starts Monday, so his 6-3, 6-3 victory over Cam Norrie in sweltering west London will have to suffice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very warm, but physically I felt good,\u201d Sinner told reporters.<\/p>\n
The appearance at the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic came just under a month after the Italian star struggled with dizziness in a stunning second-round loss at the French Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did some testing. We tried to understand what happened,\u201d he said. \u201cWe came to a conclusion which is very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s match went ahead with southern England under a “red warning” for extreme heat issued by Britain\u2019s national weather service.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Cam said, a very hot day,\u201d Sinner said in an on-court interview. \u201cExhibition matches, they are good because we try out a couple of things and hopefully be as good as we can then for the next week.”<\/p>\n
The interviewer asked him what he was trying out. \u201cI don’t know,” a smiling Sinner responded.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday at the All England Club, Sinner wore a cooling vest at practice. During the match against Norrie, he didn’t use ice packs like in the past.<\/p>\n
The early afternoon temperature in Fulham, where the grass-court event was held, was 33 C with a slight breeze.<\/p>\n
The temperature at Wimbledon on Monday is expected to be a much more manageable 24 C.<\/p>\n
In Paris, he was ahead by two sets and 5-1 in the third before losing to Juan Manuel Cerundolo 3-6, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1, 6-1. The temperature on Court Philippe-Chatrier rose to 32 C during the match, and Sinner was clearly having a tough time cooling himself down as he reached for multiple ice bags.<\/p>\n
Sinner, who has a history of problems with heat and cramps, didn’t blame the heat entirely after the loss. \u201cI think many things together caused this problem. I just need my time now to process what went wrong here,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n
At the grass-court major a year ago, Sinner beat Carlos Alcaraz 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in the final for his first Wimbledon title. Alcaraz will miss this year\u2019s tournament because of a wrist injury.<\/p>\n
The U.K.’s weather service said the region could see “a two- to three-day period where maximum temperatures in the shade exceed 37 Celsius, perhaps rising to 38 to 40 Celsius in some places. The heat will be accompanied by high humidity, exacerbating the potential for discomfort and health impacts, with very warm and humid night times also reducing the ability for people to recover overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heat impacts Wimbledon qualifying tournament<\/p>\n
Because of the heat warnings, the ball boys and ball girls for Wednesday’s matches at Wimbledon’s qualifying tournament were kept home. Their duties were handled by \u201cour Court Services team \u2014 who are all adults,\u201d the All England Club said.<\/p>\n
Also Wednesday, there was a temporary loss of power to part of the Roehampton qualifying venue, \u201cwhich meant that the electronic line calling system could not function,\u201d the club added. Heat will be looked at as a possible cause for the outage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Top-ranked Jannik Sinner is feeling optimistic about his Wimbledon title defence after sweating through an exhibition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-758524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}