IVO KARLOVIC ACCUSED Wimbledon officials of cheating in a bid to help home favourite Andy Murray after the giant Croat was called for a series of foot-faults during his defeat on Thursday.
Karlovic launched his astonishing rant after being beaten 7-5, 6-7 (5/7), 6-2, 7-6 (7/4) by British number one Murray in the second round on Centre Court.
The 33-year-old was left fuming after 11 foot-fault calls from the linesjudges led to nine crucial double-faults and he insisted his treatment called the credibility of the tournament into question.
“I feel cheated. In a grand slam, on Centre Court,” the big-serving Karlovic said.
“Right now I’m angry about it, little bit pissed, because I don’t expect it here. Even though it is against English guy who they always want to win.
“It was a little bit outrageous. In my whole life, ever since I was eight years old, I didn’t do this many foot faults. It was something like 11.
“It was never called when it was like 30 Love or 40 Love. It was always when it was 30 All or in a tiebreak. I mean, what is this?“I had a chance to win definitely. If I get these 10 points, who would have the win? I don’t know. You do the math.
“It’s Wimbledon, Centre Court, and they do this. This is BS. After this match, the whole credibility of this tournament went down for me.”
Karlovic fired down 17 aces, but he felt his performance was fatally hindered by the calls.
The world number 59, who at 6ft 10in is the tallest man on the ATP Tour, deliberately stood further back behind the line to avoid being penalised again, but even then several more foot-faults were called.
“After I don’t know how many, I stood a little bit back so they cannot call it, but they still did. So it was outrageous,” Karlovic said.
“Normally my left leg is on the line, but I went back and they still did it.“Maybe I did it, but I don’t usually and in my whole life I never did 11.
“Maybe there should also be HawkEye looking at it so I could challenge it. But I don’t see how I can do anything about it.”
Murray, who will play Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus for a place in the last 16, admitted he was surprised to see so many foot-faults called.
“There was a lot of foot faults in the match. It’s impossible for me to say whether they were foot faults or not. You can only look on the TV. And if he wasn’t foot faulting then he has a right to be upset, because there was a lot of them,” Murray said.
“But if he was, then you can’t do it. It’s not allowed. I can’t really comment on it unless I see it.”
However, Murray gave short shrift to Karlovic’s decision to question the integrity of such a prestigious and historic tournament.
“That’s very tough to question the integrity of Wimbledon, I would have thought,” he added.
“It’s got a lot of history, a lot of tradition. There’s been hundreds of thousands of matches played here over the years. I’ve never heard that before.
“But I need to see the videos. If there was 11 foot faults called against him and every one was incorrect, then that’s completely wrong and unfair.
“But for it to happen that many times, you would think there would have been a number of fairly obvious foot faults, because you don’t really see them called that much nowadays.
“If it turns out that he wasn’t foot faulting, if I was him, I’d be very, very disappointed.”
