Wimbledon is such a different surface that it can be difficult to predict upsets. The top seeds tend to move on, but the lower seeds, who knows?
Let’s look at some results that concluded. Nikolay Davydenko had to withdraw from Indian Wells after the first round due to a fractured wrist. What was originally predicted as a one month delay stretched to three months. Davydenko marked his return at Halle where he lost somewhat early to Benjamin Becker. Before his injury, Davydenko had just signed a deal with Dunlop. We’re all familiar with Federer being associated with Nike and Wilson and Nadal with Nike and Babolat. Despite a relatively steady presence in the top 10, Davydenko had never really been photogenic enough or successful enough to warrant a big contract. Recently, he signed with Dunlop to provide him clothing and a contract. He wore the clothing almost right away, but the racquet came later, presumably one much like his Prince.
Davydenko’s first round opponent was always going to be a tough one. Kevin Anderson has maybe a handful of players that are taller than him. Ivo Karlovic and maybe John Isner. Like other tall players, Anderson has a huge serve, but unlike the other two, he’s not had a tremendous amount of success. You would think, for example, that Wimbledon would suit his powerful serve.
And for two sets it did. Davydenko didn’t have too many answers. But, Davydenko has played with big servers, most notably a win over del Potro at the ATP World Tour Finals. Still, he started seeing the Anderson serve better and took the second set in a tiebreak, and the third set, 7-5. By the fifth set, Davydenko was managing, for the most part, to hold his serve comfortably. Always serving ahead, Davydenko was up 8-7 and hit a few good returns to get to match point, then guessed right on a serve to his backhand, kept the ball low, as Anderson rushed the net, and squeezed out, in some ways, a much closer match than Federer’s (and in other ways, not).
Oh, to briefly talk about the Federer match. Apparently, the match was much closer than expected. In the third set at 4-all, Federer was down 0-40 on his own serve, and was concerned that if he got broken, he wouldn’t break back. He held serve and then broke. He said, in a post-match interview, that Falla was a tough guy to play. Falla likes to hit flat and can half-volley off the baseline pretty well. He said, at Halle, there were more bad bounces, and Falla didn’t react well to it, and that if he dominated, then he could win easily, but his strokes were off, and he had a hard time reading the Falla serve until late into the match.
Andy Roddick had a pretty easy match against Rajeev Ram. The two have played doubles with each other, but not much singles. Roddick never seemed to be in trouble as Ram tried to do more than he was capable. The announcers noticed that Ram builds his game around Pete Sampras, and although he lacks Sampras’s effectiveness, he does at least look very much like Sampras. Roddick in straight sets over Ram.
In the post-match interview, Roddick got asked the usual questions. How did he feel about returning to Wimbledon and such. Did he put the loss of Federer behind him. These are the kinds of questions that generally irritate Roddick. The press, it seems, wants to put a prism of how a player should react and feel onto every player. When Roddick refuses to see things the same way, the tennis press scratches its head, but continues to ask questions in the same way.
Roddick says that he doesn’t forget a match like the Wimbledon final from the previous year, but neither does he wallow in depression unable to play the game. He finds positives in that match. He hadn’t played a Slam final in a long time and hadn’t pushed Federer in a long time, so both facts allowed him to take solace in what was ultimately a losing effort. Roddick declined to speculate how playing Wimbledon (or any Slam) as a father would feel given he’s not a father.
Hewitt lost the initial set to Gonzalez–in this case, Maximo Gonzalez. Fernando Gonzalez was a bit injured, so he took the opportunity to head to South Africa for some World Cup action. Perhaps his presence helped Chile beat Switzerland in a 1-0 victory which should be enough to qualify Chile as one of two teams to make it from its group into the main draw. Gonzalez then fell meekly as Hewitt took the next three sets in commanding fashion.
Mardy Fish, it seems, took some time off last year due to injury and listened to one Andrew Stephen Roddick who advised him to lose some weight to make himself more competitive. Fish lost 30 lbs and is having a mini-resurgence in his career, including a finalist appearance at Queen’s and two victories over Andy Murray. Fish played Bernard Tomic, who is still pretty young, and learning how to win on the main tour. It was expected that Fish’s recent success and Tomic’s relative lack of world class tour experience would play in the American’s favor, and it did. The two played a tight second set tiebreak, which Fish won, and Fish went to win in straight sets.
Peter Luczak, the plucky Australian, apparently didn’t have much regard for the Robredo game. Robredo hasn’t played stellar tennis in a few months, and surely grass is not his favorite surface. Even so, some must have felt that Robredo could pull through. Not so. Luczak in four sets.
Gael Monfils had a pretty easy win marred only somewhat by a tight second set tiebreak. Leonardo Mayer is a tough Argentine player, but Monfils apparently had too much game. Three sets to Monfils.
Nicolas Massu, a Chilean veteran, has one distinction that Roger Federer does not. A gold medal in singles at the Olympics, which he won back in 2004. Massu, alas, has not played that much at the tour level lately. However, he had to be thinking his chances were good against Serbian player Ilika Bozoljac. While you might think Novak Djokovic or perhaps Victor Troicki are household names in Serbia, it turns out Bozoljac has some notoriety. He dated Miss World Canada back in 2006, a woman 5 years older than him, and when that broke up, he dated Playboy model, Anastasija Buđić. It turns out she was on Serbian Big Brother and referred to a mysterious boyfriend that was Bozoljac. They’ve since broken up.
However, Bozoljac did his job and played tennis, beating Massu in four sets, two of which went to tiebreaks.
Speaking of Troicki, Victor Troicki had an easy straight set match over Russian, Igor Kunitsyn.
Taylor Dent, whose rank has never been too high, but whose serve has always made him a dangerous player, was considered the prohibitive favorite over clay courter, Juan Ignacio Chela. Chela had a bit of a resurgence in his career when he won Houston, an admittedly smallish clay court event, by beating Sam Querrey in the finals. Dent had to qualify for Wimbledon this year, and felt he was serving pretty well in qualies, but not so well against Chela. Fortunately, he felt his groundies were doing OK.
Dent has built a game around a style that has fallen out of fashion, that is a strong serve and potential volley. His groundstrokes, he said, were never so steady that he could cut back from approaching the net. When asked in a post-match interview why he didn’t play more doubles, he said that although his serve is good, to play good doubles, you need to return well and he doesn’t put enough returns into play to be successful.
The Przysiezny-Ljubicic match was one of those matches whose stats tell you it was pretty even, but apparently where Przysiezny played the big points better. He got more looks at break points and won most of them. One of the upsets of the day.
The other seeded player to fall was Marin Cilic against German, Florian Mayer. In this case, the match was more decidedly in Mayer’s favor. Mayer had far few unforced errors and was more effective pressuring Cilic’s first serve than vice versa. Cilic has not played all that well since the Australian Open. Although Cilic fought off many break points, Mayer only needed a handful. Meanwhile, Mayer only had 2 break points against him, and he saved both.
Twelfth seed, Tomas Berdych, who has a game much like Cilic, apparently likes the grass much better, or at least had an opponent that he could handle better in Andrey Golubev and won in straight sets.
In a tossup match, Horacio Zeballos, the clay courter, lost to Yen-Hsun Lu, in straight sets. Feliciano Lopez won in four sets over Jesse Levine. Kohlschreiber in four sets over Starace. Benjamin Becker in four sets over American Ryan Sweeting. Montanes in straight sets over Lorenzi. American Brendan Evans won an easy match over Jesse Huta Galung of the Netherlands. Ricardis Berankis in four sets over Carsten Ball. Marsel Ilhan of Turkey came from 2 sets to love down to win in 5 sets over Marcos Daniel. Melzer in four sets over Dustin Brown of Jamaica.
Wawrinka fell in five sets to Uzbeckistani player, Denis Istomin. Victor Hanescu needed five sets over Andrey Kuznetsov.
Novak Djokovic is playing his nemesis, Olivier Rochus, who has a winning record. Rochus took sets 1 and 3. Djokovic took sets 2 and 4. Rochus just went up a break and 2-0 in the fifth set. Djokovic must hate Rochus, a player that he probably should beat, and yet who has considerable success against him.
Tomorrow, Rafa is the 2nd match on Center Court after Serena, playing Japanese player, Kei Nishikori. Following him, Robin Soderling plays Robby Ginepri.
Kendrick plays Tsonga in the opening round. Murray plays Jan Hajek. Kiefer plays Ferrer and Ferrero plays Malisse.
Another full day tomorrow. Djokovic just broke back in the fifth set to get back on serve.
