Things took a turn during Novak Djokovic‘s quarterfinal clash against Felix Auger-Aliassime at Wimbledon. Tournament referee Denise Parnell made a surprise announcement to both the players, with the match at one set apiece, and the Serb wasn’t happy about it at all. She had announced that the Centre Court roof would be closed at 7:40 PM, which led to a disagreement between her and Djokovic. The argument between the two became such a hot topic that it even prompted Carlos Alcaraz to raise a serious question.

Turns out that the Spaniard was watching the match and left a comment on Alex Corretja’s Instagram Live that received a lot of attention. “Who do you think benefits from the closed roof?” Alcaraz asked.

Djokovic raised questions over the closing of the roof because he wanted to know why they were trying to do it so early.

“The other day you didn’t want to close it until 8:30,” he was heard saying to the referee. “Now you want to close it. You don’t want to get to 8:30? It’s 7:40 now. We can play a whole another set outdoors. We’re an outdoor tournament.”

Denise replied by referencing Jannik Sinner’s match against Jan-Lennard Struff that had taken place earlier at the Centre Court. But Djokovic was in no mood to agree with her. “With Jannik, I don’t care what happens in his matches. I’m talking about our match right now,” he said.

Djokovic didn’t stop there and then referenced one of his particular matches, where the roof hadn’t been closed till around 8:20 PM. He also accused the officials of not following their own rules.

“You remember the first round, you didn’t close it til like 8:20. Now you want to close it at 7:40. Where’s the consistency? You’re so proud of your rules and you’re not sticking to any kind of rules. You have no idea what the rule is,” he further said.

Auger-Aliassime, who was listening to the argument from a distance, also sided with his opponent on the matter and asked for the roof to remain open. But their demands fell on deaf ears, and the roof was closed before the third set began.

Both Djokovic and Auger-Aliassime decided to leave the court while the roof was being closed. They reappeared once it had shut and resumed the play after a quick warm-up. Djokovic proved to be the better player in the third set and clinched it 6-3 to take a valuable lead in the match. But Auger-Aliassime fought back well, and the fourth set was dragged to a tiebreaker. The Canadian reigned supreme in the breaker by 7-4 and forced the match into a decider.

Coming back, Djokovic has already lost his temper on multiple occasions during the tournament. He had also grabbed attention for his fiery on-court behavior during his fourth-round clash against Roman Safiullin.

Novak Djokovic was handed a code violation in the Round of 16

Djokovic had a tough start to the match against Safiullin. He was trailing the first set by 5-2 at one stage, but made quite the comeback and took the set to a tiebreaker. He won the breaker 8-6 to take the lead before taking a giant step towards victory by clinching the second set 6-3.

But Djokovic was livid after having his serve broken during the early stages of the third set. This resulted in him yelling a word in Serbian. The chair umpire didn’t waste any time in handing him a code violation for obscenity.

The crowd also became frustrated with Djokovic after he smashed a ball away in anger. This incident occurred after he lost the third set 3-6. The outburst unsurprisingly drew a lot of boos from the crowd. Djokovic took notice of this and apologized to the crowd after winning the match in four sets.

“And the outbursts as well,” he had said during his post-match interview on July 5. “The outbursts. You know, the meltdowns. I had a few of those today as well. I apologize.”

The victory over Safiullin proved to be historic for Djokovic. It saw him break Roger Federer’s record for the male player with the most wins at Wimbledon. He now has 106 wins under his name in comparison to Federer’s tally of 105, and it remains to be seen whether he will manage to stretch his tally further by defeating Auger-Aliassime.