Wimbledon '11: Point by point coverage

[falafaclese]

The draws will be done tomorrow morning, and play starts on Monday.

[roseha]

Isner and Mahut will play in the first round!

news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/13807291.stm

[falafaclese]

That's awful. I feel bad for them because if it were me, the last thing I would want is to have to deal with all the manufactured anticipation that's going to bring. Psychologically, I'd just want to get on with it and have a relatively low key start this year, and now they won't.

I hope they don't put them on the same court.

[Jer2002]

Fixed. Seriously, I think it was fixed.

[harry24]

After a quick glance, it looks as though Rafa might have Raonic in the third round and delPo in the fourth, Fish/Berdych quarter, Murray semi. Rough draw.

Feli's draw looks pretty good for a non-seed. His first seed/third round is Bellucci and his next is Roddick and his next would be Monfils. Those are matches he could definitely win. He would then face Murray in the fourth, which is the best option of the top four. Roger's draw looks good too. His toughest match before the semi's would be a quarter with Isner.

Ferrer has a good draw too through to a possible fourth round with Tsonga/Dolgopolov.

Soderling/Petschner play in the first round. Yikes. If Djoker can get past Kevin Anderson in the second round, his path to a quarter against Soderling looks pretty easy, and IIRC his record against Sod is excellent.

[mooncreek]

Murray's draw is basically revenge row to get to Nadal. Doubt Cilic will get to the third round but the fourth round seeds are Wawrinka and Gasquet, both players he's beaten in five setters at Wimbledon. I'm already cringing at the hype that a Murray-Gasquet match would draw in the UK. Then there's Roddick, who would be dreaming of payback for Queens', though this assumes Andy R doesn't have to deal with Feli or Janko (who has beaten him at Wimbledon).

Ferrer and Tsonga have rather sweet draws to get to each other. If Jo is healthy, I'd think he'd be favored.

That section of the draw The Marathon Rematch occurs is actually a great opportunity for the winner - assuming it isn't another 11 hour match. Almagro would be the second round match, and Youzhny is the third round seed. This much I know: that book Nico just put out will sell through the roof.

I must say that Raonic possibly playing Haas to get to Nadal really intrigues me.

Soderling/Petzschner smells like trouble even before you remember that Philipp is now coming here as a Wimbledon champ.

I looked through Federer's section to find a way for history to repeat regarding that article about him vs Sampras. There's no 19-yr-old Roger equivalent but I would consider Mannarino a possible Bastl.

[lt]

Go Fug Yourself did a slideshow of the Wimbledon party. As soon as I got to Bethanie Mattek Sands I knew I had to bring it over. Really starting to love her. . .

[acre]

Okay, I'm still pissed about the seedings of S and V.And just gene-ally I think it's nuts that Se-ena is seeded 7th, and Venus is what 23 o- 24?
C'mon. Yeah, I haven't wo-ked out the fo-mulas, and yea S is the defending cham- but .... S has been out a YEA_, V 5 months, and oh yea .... V is only just a shabby 5 time champion!r!! Pfft. If S is 7th, V outta be in the 13-15 range IMO.

My head spins will all the mulitple possible matchups though, both men and women. I think I'm going to take a wild, wild, shot at the b-ackets fo- the 1st time, but confidently expect to c-ash and bu-n at the soonest possibility.

Oh, and as I said in the brackets ... yes I still have a dead key, but honest, it's only ONE. Think what comes between nopq[-]stuv. That's the one and only, so not too awful a code, -ight?

[mooncreek]

It's nice to know that Lady Gaga's stylist is able to find work with a second client. I say that, as long as she's now ranked this high, take advantage of opportunities to fully explore the crazy.

[falafaclese]

I always enjoy reading as much of the pre-major forecasting:

New York Times men and women to watch over the next fortnight;
tennis.com's editors' picks;
si.com's men's and women's picks.

Predictably, it looks like Serena is the women's favorite, and Rafa is the men's favorite. I would have thought that more people would have picked Djoker, but I guess it's pretty clear that this has historically been his weakest surface. I wouldn't write him off though. It's interesting that each of the tennis.com editors picked a different winner even though the women's side is always the one described as "wide open", and apparently some people's hope for Roddick springs eternal. It's a long shot, but it would be a hell of a story. I seem to like him in spite of the on-court petulance.

ETA: ESPN's experts picks

They all seem to lean heavily towards Sharapova, as they often do, and to this point they've been wrong, but for the first time since her shoulder problems, I think she's actually a viable proven top contender this time. Still, that serve takes vacations at the most inopportune times . . .

[falafaclese]

Sorry for the double posting.

Don't forget espn3.com has coverage of all six tv courts. If you can't use that, livescorehunter also has feeds for all of the courts, although I don't know if the quality and reliability will be as good. Wimbledon always seems to have the best video coverage of all the slams. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like tennischannel.com will have coverage though. Hopefully they've just been lax about promoting it, because their quality is usually very good too.

Also, there's a Wimby app for anyone with an I-phone. Unfortunately for me they don't seem to have one for Androids like RG did.

[chocula]

Hey Acre,

Had to respond about Venus's seeding. I wasn't that peeved until I realized that she got the same seeding of 24 as Maria Sharapova got in 2009.

Sharapova was ranked 60 in the world and her previous 2 appearances at Wimbledon landed with a "stellar" finish of 2nd and 4th round losses.

Venus is ranked 33 and her previous 2 appearances at Wimbledon landed with losses in the Quarterfinal and Final. Not to mention that she's won the thing 5 times and has been to an additional 3 finals.

According to the Men's formula, Maria Sharapova shouldn't have been seeded at all, and Venus should have been seeded around 13-16 depending on whether or not they used the Eastbourne results.

Sorry, but I find it quite troubling that Wimbledon seems to treat the Williams sisters unfairly. Under those above circumstances, no sane minded person would give those two women the same seeds.

[acre]

Huh, yea fala like I said I didn't look at/work through any of the seeding equations when I decided V should be in the 13-15 range ... but I see the formula fo- the men completely backs that up, and ..... well, it just makes sense, right?? She's VENUS WILLIAMS, 5 time Wimbledon champion, and we're nto talking about back in the mists of hi-to-y, and even some she's lost of late have at least been in the finals to (uhhh oh umm who's that no-account, scrub of a playe-, lucky to be thee =? Gee they're names even sound alike!)
23/24 pfffft.

And I just can't get why Wimby would have anything against these two outstanding champions. S can definitely get testy and out of bounds on occassion but Venus is a damn doll. I'd alway like to see he win just so I cn hea- he- lovely, funny, cha-ming acceptance speeches. Love he.

My brackets ae 50-75% wishful thinking(except fo the matchups I have NO idea about). So in my perect world it's Fed and Venus. SO not betting the house on it! I could be pleased with a variety of women's champs, but Fed has full possession of my heart. If he shoud(noooooooooooo) go out ea-lyish, give me a few days to moun and then I'll be back to gene-ic tennis fan, wanting and enjoying a tight men's match.

[mooncreek]

While I want to see Serena play, I wish she was playing someone else. So far, the trainwreck that is Rezai has only been stuff I've read about because she loses early on non-televised courts.

It's been a year and the fact that Pironkova made the semis here still makes absolutely no sense to me.

[acre]

oops, wicked double post