How the draw will unfold ... possibly

Roger Federer, his family and closest friends were treated to dinner with all the members’ trimmings at the All England Club on Friday evening. At the same time, Tommy Haas was flying his doctor from Munich in an attempt to preserve his place in a championship in which his misfortune has become depressing legend.

The pair met at the club yesterday, when the German informed Federer that he would be unable to play in today’s fourth round, because of a severe muscle tear in his lower abdominals that had necessitated prompt action to stanch the flow of blood. Federer receives a walkover into the last eight and is within three victories of his fifth successive Wimbledon title.

For Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Lleyton Hewitt and the rest marooned in the bottom half of the draw, the news was as welcome as the week’s weather forecast. Federer can put his feet up for another 24 hours at least while others fret and fulminate, casting anxious glances at the leaden London skies and fully fit opponents.

Poor Haas has had wretched luck throughout his career, but at this event, where he won on his only previous date on Centre Court, against Andre Agassi eight years ago, the 29-year-old has been especially plagued. In June 2002 — a month after reaching a career-high No 2 in the world — his parents, Peter and Brigitte, were involved in a motorcycle accident in Sarasota, Florida, that left Peter in a coma for three weeks. Two years ago, in the warm-up before his match against Janko Tipsarevic, of Serbia, he stood on a ball that was being rolled to one of the ballboys, twisted his ankle and had to forfeit.

In Munich in April, he re-injured the right shoulder that has been a permanent source of frustration, felt he had played enough tennis coming into Wimbledon to do himself justice and then, in the second set of his third-round triumph over Dmitry Tursunov, of Russia, on Friday, felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He took painkillers to finish the match and realised only the next day what harm he had done.

“I have a pretty severe tear, there has been some serious bleeding,” he said. “I didn’t know if I was going to be ready to play Wimbledon this year, then they knocked me three spots down the seedings to 13, which I regard as my lucky number, I reach the fourth round for the first time in nine tries and then this happens. Who knows if this opportunity will come again, but maybe there will be a happy ending some time.”

Even the arrival of Erich Rembeck, his personal physician and the team doctor for TSV Munich football club, who has helped Haas through many of his injuries, could not work the magic required. He needs a month’s rest before the American hard-court season.

The withdrawal of Haas prompted yet another redesign of the order of play, which comprises more than 100 matches today. “We are a long way from desperation,” Andrew Jarrett, the referee, said yesterday. “The forecast is not wonderful but we cannot look too far ahead. Of course there are contingencies for a third week, but they were in place in January.”

When Jarrett talked of “mopping up” the rest of the men’s and women’s third-round matches as a priority, he saw the funny side. “We’d like to complete those and the top half of the ladies’ round of 16s \,” he said. “On Tuesday, we’ll play the bottom half of the ladies’ 16s, the entire men’s fourth round and the ladies’ top-half quarter-finals. We’d be back on track then.”

Over to you, low-pressure systems.