JUAN Martin del Potro was aching all over after his 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6), 7-5, 6-1 defeat to Lucas Pouille of France on Court No 12. But at least that troublesome left wrist, the subject of three operations, wasn't hurting. That was enough reason alone for this giant Argentinian to still have a broad smile on his face as he took his bow from Wimbledon last night.

Playing in his first Grand Slam since the 2014 Australian Open, the 2009 US Open winner had rolled back the years when taking Stan Wawrinka in four intense sets during the week. He paid the price for that here, as his body failed to recover in time, and Pouille, a stealthy 22-year-old Frenchman who was playing here as No 32 seed, took full advantage. The weakness in Del Potro's wrist forces him to slice his backhand more often than not, and Pouille attacked that wing with a vengeance. Resuming two sets to one up, he took just 24 minutes to wrap things up and now faces Bernard Tomic of Australia.

"As you can see I'm exhausted," said Del Potro. "I finish really, really tired this tournament. Yesterday was even worse than today. My body is hurting everywhere, but that's normal after a big match against Wawrinka. I have to keep working hard, because in the future I will need to be ready between matches and feel better physically. Normally, three years ago, I could close the match in three sets. But Pouille is a great player. He's 30 player in the world, and I'm not losing against no one, you know. If I'm still smiling after this loss, that means I don't care about the match. Of course I wanted to win, but I couldn't."

Elsewhere on 'People's Sunday', John Isner was up to his old tricks again, extending the fifth set of his meeting with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to 36 games before he eventually succumbed, 19-17. This wasn't quite on a par with the American's 70-68 final set win against Nicolas Mahut in 2010 and Tsonga lives onto a last 16 encounter with his countryman Richard Gasquet, who took care of Spain's Albert Ramos-Vinolas in four sets. The winner of that match will take on either Andy Murray or Nick Kyrgios with Jiri Vesely knocking out Joao Sousa of Portugal to set up an all-Czech meeting with his countryman Tomas Berdych.