Wimbledon - Day 1 OOP

First topic message reminder :

Centre Court Matches (1pm start): 
Victor Hanescu v Roger Federer [3] 
Kristina Mladenovic v Maria Sharapova [3] 
Benjamin Becker v Andy Murray [2] 

Court 1 Matches (1pm start): 
Maria Joao Koehler v Victoria Azarenka [2] 
Rafael Nadal [5] v Steve Darcis 
Lleyton Hewitt v Stanislas Wawrinka [11] 


Full schedule:
http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/scores/schedule/index.html

Match of the day: Hewitt v Wawrinka
Both players come in with grass court form; Hewitt after reaching the semi final at Queens, Wawrinka after reaching the final in 's-Hertogenbosch.
Hewitt's run at Queens included some wins against quality players. The fact that Hewitt has had a week in Wimbledon already while Wawrinka will only just arrive may work in Hewitt's favour, however Wawrinka has played well at both slams this year, and I don't expect Hewitt to stop him here.
Prediction: Wawrinka in 4.       

Other matches of note:
Baghdatis v Cillic, Verdasco v Malisse
James Ward plays Yen-Hsun Lu for a chance to play (probably) Murray in R2. Would like to see the local guy win that and get a chance to play on Centre in his career.

Wardy saves a match point and holds to make it 5-5. Unbelievable!!

If you step on court you take Whatever outcome on the chin...excuses' whether genuine or not only belittle the other guy

Hes hanging on

_homogenised_ wrote:I am going having a bottle a wine and then gonna sit down and watch Nadal get hammered.  It's gonna be great.

You will be hammered, too.

Argh Wardy, he has 2 break points and blows one....

By the way if anyone is interested, Becker gave some sublime quotes about fame, Nuremberg etc. I will try to post a link to the site but you can google it up. I didn't realise he had the gravitas for that in him, but then we never really know another person fully even if we live with that person

And the other one. Both 2nd serves, both UEs. That one had "Hit me!!" written all over it.

To be fair, did Nadal bring up his knees other than to say he wasn't going to grace questions about them with an answer? Did he make excuses?

coolpixel wrote:If you step on court you take Whatever outcome on the chin...excuses' whether genuine or not only belittle the other guy

Absolutely. Federer quite agrees with that.

Djokovic's early losses to Rochus, or Federer's to Horna or Ancic are very similar.

Of course not but it depends on what sort of bias glasses youre wearing

It was classy of Nadal to avoid blaming injury for the loss, and give credit to Darcis and maybe his fans can learn from this.

Injury or no injury, the outcome is the same as last year; he lost to an attacking opponent who more readily took the initiative and simply played much better grass court Tennis.

careful tarring people with the same brush TG

invisiblecoolers wrote:

banbrotam wrote:

falzy21 wrote:

Please calm down - unfortunately there are a few Rafa and Roger fans who go OTT about their players and then are made to look silly.

So you round it off to just Fedal fans and comfortably leave murray and Nole fans out .

Matter of fact all fans do go gagga guggu over their hero's performance.

I can't think of any Murray fans who would write an article mickey taking such a defeat for their rival. There is one Novak fan who is as bad, granted. Given that they have the highest number of fans there are a number of starry eyed Fedal fans who take glee in the downfall of others

6-5 to Lu now.  Wardy's wasted so many chances

Oh, Keothavong loses the first set. THERE'S A SURPRISE.

Ward is certainly having to scrap. He's squandered a couple of chances though.

Tiebreak!!! Give Wardy his due, he engages with the crowd. It's a shame they aren't on a bigger court.

"There were not a lot of good things for me. I tried my best all the time I had my chances but I did not make it. It is difficult to adapt your game on grass. Now is not the right time to talk about my knee. The only thing I can do is congratulate my opponent. It is not a tragedy, I lost, it is sport."

"I'm confident that I will recover and be ready for the next tournaments. I have played far more than I expected after my injury and I will try my best for the next couple of years."

Considering how his opponent was specifically asked if he was deliberately targeting Rafa's injury (in a very classless way, I might add, the question, not Darcis who was all class), it was pretty good of Rafa to lay the groundwork in saying he wouldn't talk about the knee early. What is he meant to say on the matter? "Yes, my knee hurt a bit" - well, then people rightly ask why he came back and played (because he likes playing here is the answer) and say he is belittling Darcis. "No, it was fine" - well this is clearly a lie, if it were fine I think everyone would be amazed. That doesn't take anything away from Darcis' performance, he was icing his leg as well actually. His actually response of "now is not the time to talk about the knee" is as neutral and respectful as you can get, saying it isn't appropriate and isn't the matter but he gets done for making excuses for saying that.

Some people will jump on it no matter what he says, even if it is "no comment"

laverfan wrote:

_homogenised_ wrote:I am going having a bottle a wine and then gonna sit down and watch Nadal get hammered.  It's gonna be great.

You will be hammered, too.

   That takes 2 bottles, and I am reserving that for his retirement.

Anyway, I promise I won't bring Knee Wonder up again this tournament.  It's moved on without him.  In a way I even hope the other big 3 get sent packing as well and we get a NEW slam winner.  But I am a Fed fan first so I can't betray him!

I casually read # rogerfederer and #rafaelnadal on Twitter the other day and a lot of posts are vomit inducing. There are so many people with such low self esteem , and in that I include all those who wear football or any other club shirts

There are always people who hate you... no matter what you do or how you conduct yourself. To them everything you do or say is spun negatively. Thankfully Rafas a better man than any of them... hence why he bounces back all the time. I regret my younger years when i was soo critical of Roger, lot easier to enjoy tennis this way

Rusty's serving for the 2nd set v Stan. I feel sorry for The Man, Hewitt was the worst first round draw he could have had.

6-3 Lu... bugger

and Wards out... massive bum

Ah poor Wardy. Well played Lu though, he handled the big points much better than Wardy. Murray's going to eat him in the second round though.

Ward Lu-ses infour sets. He had his chances but couldn't take them.

The Special Juan wrote:Rusty's serving for the 2nd set v Stan.  I feel sorry for The Man, Hewitt was the worst first round draw he could have had.

Worst draw anyone could have for R1. He was the floater to avoid, form he was in and his history.

Hewitt is all set to knock out the other Swiss. For a 32-yo spare-parts carrier, he is doing really well.

You wouldn't be surprised if Hewitt beat anyone outside of the top four.

After all of his surgeries and injuries, to be held in that esteem, shows the calibre of the man.

I love Hewitt's shirt with the C'mon on it

It's been a decent day for my picks in TSJ's game. I had Hewitt to win this Section of the draw, essentially I thought the winner of this match would reach the Quarters, but plumped for Hewitt.

Hewitt GSM!

Very glad for Hewitt. Go Ozzie!

Gives someone a real chance of Quarter potentially against Federer. 

Darcis/Kubot/Robert/Paire/Isner/Mannarino/Hewitt/Brown left.

ryan86 wrote:Gives someone a real chance of Quarter potentially against Federer. 

Darcis/Kubot/Robert/Paire/Isner/Mannarino/Hewitt/Brown left.

Jisner I reckon, although I wouldn't be surprised if Rusty managed it. Paire could but I wouldn't bet on him to win a match because he's streakier than streaky bacon, like Puig brought home today

Ugh Keothavong bageled in the second THERE'S A SURPRISE!!

And that's Day 1, last doubles match done and dusted!

I have more respect for Nadal today, he genuinely sounded ticked off with questions about his **** and wanted to congratulate Darcis. Sometimes the press don't give people enough respect.

Well that's my last (and admittedly first) go at doing a daily thread with a prediction. Wawrinka 

The Special Juan wrote:I have more respect for Nadal today, he genuinely sounded ticked off with questions about his **** and wanted to congratulate Darcis.  Sometimes the press don't give people enough respect.

Very true, media persons at times over do their job to create more sensation for their media news to get more viewers.

A Rule have to be applied where only winner be interview after the match in the mid of the tournament, this way silly questions be ducked.

YvonneT wrote:Well that's my last (and admittedly first) go at doing a daily thread with a prediction. Wawrinka 

Keep at it! It's good to have a daily thread going, you did a good job with the summaries

Oh my!  What a result, and the second year running.  Did not see this one coming (just like I did not see the one last year).

Certainly very pleased with the outcome, better than anything I was hoping for.  I was thinking that maybe Paire could give him a hard time in the third round, and even so I thought it was more wishful thinking than anything else.

On one hand, obviously, commiserations to Rafa fans and hopefully there will not be too much WUMing you will have to put up with.  On the other hand, however, I would note I see nothing wrong with celebrating for those of us who wanted this result.

summerblues wrote:

On one hand, obviously, commiserations to Rafa fans and hopefully there will not be too much WUMing you will have to put up with.  On the other hand, however, I would note I see nothing wrong with celebrating for those of us who wanted this result.

How many other hands do you need?

Well Rafa fans had their moments few weeks back its time for the other fans to enjoy and them to relax.

Absolutely nothing wrong with celebrating the result, there are lots of valid reasons for doing so! Darcis deserves a ton of praise and frankly if I were a Murray or Federer fan I'd feel a lot better about their chances of going all the way and I'd be happy with the result too. As long as Nadal is OK in the longer-term