Roman Safiullin’s wife couldn’t bring herself to look as her husband battled Joao Fonseca in the first set of their match. Fonseca is attempting to reach the Wimbledon last-16 for the first time, but he found himself 5-3 down in the first set with Safiullin looking to go one set ahead. As Safiullin was serving for the set, Fonseca found himself on the end of an outrageous stroke of fortune as his return shot hit the top of the net and crawled over. It wasn’t the first time in the match that it happened, and BBC commentator Pete Odgers screamed: “It’s happened again.”
Fonseca was quick to apologise to Safiullin, but as the camera panned to his wife, Liudmyla Smolanova, in the crowd, she was looking down at the floor. And Odgers said: “Wife can’t watch, and you can understand when stuff like that happens.”
Safiullin, to his credit, though, bounced back to claim the set a couple of minutes later, and Odgers couldn’t help but say: “Wife happy now,” as the camera panned to show her smiling and recording the match.
A quarter-finalist at Wimbledon in 2023, Safiullin set up a showdown against Fonseca with a 6-0, 4-6, 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (10-5) triumph against Botic van de Zandschulp on Wednesday. The 28-year-old is currently on a five-game winning run, having come through Wimbledon qualifying to earn his berth in the main draw.
The world number 135 came into the match as a heavy underdog but produced some brilliant tennis to take the opening two sets and put tennis sensation Fonseca in big trouble.
Fonseca had raced past Jesper de Jong 6-1, 7-5, 6-4 on Wednesday to advance to the third round at SW19 for the second consecutive year.
Asked about his approach on grass afterwards, he said: “You actually need to be brave. You need to focus and you need to have courage with the movement on court.
“You can’t be afraid to do movement and slide. You need to feel good on court with movement. You also need to be brave because if you don’t [get to] the ball, the ball is going to get to you, and sometimes you’re going to hit the ball just behind you and get a miss.
“So you need to always be brave [getting to] the ball. So it’s a surface [on which] you have less opportunities to break the guy, and the guy has less opportunities to break you. It’s a very fast surface, and you need to be very focused all the time.”
