You have a link to a tournament where a player forfeited his first match of the elimination rounds?
After a reasonable effort I've found the following:
By and large, there are generally three distinct stages of a multiple stage tournament.
A. a qualifying (preliminary) stage
B. a round robin (group) stage
C. an elimination (knockout) stage
There are numerous examples (WPA, FIFA, UEFA) where a player or team is unable to proceed from stage A to stage B. In these scenarios, almost without exception the practice has been to advance another player or team into stage B. On some occasions, that player or team will be selected from the same region or group as the player/team who was unable to advance (FIFA, UEFA). However, on other occasions, the player/team is drawn from the entire qualifying pool at large (WPA). In either case, the decision is usually made upon the player or team's record during the qualifying stage.
I have only found 2 examples where a player/team was unable to proceed from stage B to stage C. Those two are the 2014 CSI 8-ball invitationals (and we all know what happened there) and the 2012 Women's Olympic Badminton tournament in London.
During the 2012 Women's Olympic Badminton tournament, 4 qualifying teams (2 from group A and 2 from group C) were disqualified after suspicions of attempting to dump their final group stage match in order to avoid having to play the top rated Chinese team in the first round of the the knockout stage.
The top 2 teams from group A (Korea & China) along with the top 2 teams from group C (Korea & Indonesia) were disqualified after the round robin stage and the bottom 2 teams from both groups (Russia & Canada in group A, Australia & South Africa in group C) were allowed to advance into the knockout stage.
Finally, if a player/team is unable to continue a stage AFTER that particular stage has already begun, the generally accepted practice is to give a bye to the remaining player(s) that would have faced that player/team.
If anyone has examples to the contrary, I would be genuinely interested in hearing about them.
I think one interesting side note is that due to the format of round robin tournaments, they seem to perpetuate and fuel a lot tournament shenanigans.