Novak Djokovic on Wimbledon's scheduling fiasco: 'I just think it was a wrong decision'

Novak Djokovic did not agree with Wimbledon's decision to postpone his fourth round match against Adrian Mannarino to Tuesday (11 July).

The Serbian ace was due to play on Monday (10 July), however, with Rafael Nadal's epic five-set defeat to Gilles Muller on Court One still ongoing at the time, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) insisted that switching Djokovic's match to Centre Court would have led to a "significant safety issue."

Instead, Djokovic faced Mannarino on Tuesday, comfortably defeating him in a straight set 6-2, 7-6, 6-4 victory despite suffering an arm injury to reach the quarter-final stage.

However, the 12-time Grand Slam winner will not have the benefit of a day's rest like the other remaining quarter-finalists and spoke shortly afterwards on how he felt his match could have still featured on the same day as everyone else.

"It was a long day for both Mannarino and me," Djokovic said, as quoted on Tennis World USA. "We were scheduled to play, as you know, after an epic match, [Rafael] Nadal and [Gilles] Muller."

"I just think it was a wrong decision not to play us last night, because we could have played. I think the last match on the Centre Court was done before 7pm. Having in mind that Centre Court has the roof and lights, we could have played till 11pm.

"There was security reasons. That was the only excuse, that basically there were explanations that we were getting. I just didn't see any logic in not playing us on the Centre Court. If the Court 1 ticketholders cannot go to the Centre Court, only the second Centre Court ticketholders can go, which they were already at the hill. They could just make the announcement, move them in, and we could play. But the decision was made, and that's all."

Nadal and Muller's gruelling contest lasted four hours and 48 minutes in what was the longest match of Wimbledon so far.

With the final set lasting just over two hours which included 27 games, Djokovic believes a fifth set tie-break would help in these situations, especially on the grass-court.

"I just don't see any reason why not," he explained. "Because [John] Isner and [Nicolas] Mahut made a history with an 11-hour match once. Is that a reason why we're keeping it? Yeah, it is great drama. But that player has to go out tomorrow."

"It is for a spectator. But for a player to play a five, six-hour match, then come back the next day or within two days and perform, it's not really what your body's looking for, to be honest. If you are already getting to the 6-all fifth set, you might as well just decide it in a tiebreak."

Djokovic will have no rest as he faces Tomas Berdych next in a quarter-final clash on Wednesday (12 July).