Novak Djokovic won his opening-round match against Dellien but the Serbian sided with other tennis players against the harsh playing conditions.
Tokyo is experiencing very warm weather these days and tennis players were not happy about the scheduling of matches. Earlier in the day, Medvedev was spotted taking off his shirt between changeovers due to the heat and even called the conditions 'a joke' after the match.
Djokovic himself spoke on the issue saying:
"I’m still waiting to meet the player that likes this kind of weather. Playing in extreme heat and humidity that is 90 per cent or God knows how much, it’s very challenging."
He further said:
“Obviously it’s the same for everyone and it’s something we’ve known coming into Tokyo, we expected that the conditions were going to be very tough, but before you come here and experience that you don’t really know how difficult it is."
The first day largely went without trouble with only Zarina Diyas from Kazakhstan retiring after feeling unwell. Djokovic expressed confusion as to why the schedule won't be changed saying:
“I don’t really get why ITF doesn’t want to move the matches. This was the last centre court match and it was finished before 5 pm. There is hopefully some kind of an understanding from ITF on what they’ve seen. All the athletes train and dream of being at an
Olympic Games and
then playing for half an hour and retiring, you don’t want to have the
Olympic experience that way. But we have to accept whatever the
circumstances are.”
For the now the schedule won't change as an ITF spokesperson confirmed they are monitoring the situation and will make changes if they feel it's neccesary.