Thoughts on Wimbledon Day One

A statistic to start you off with

Matches won by British players in Grand Slams, excluding top ranked Andy Murray, since June 2008: 0

Matches won by French players in Grand slams, excluding top ranked Gael Monfils, today alone: 2

Matches won by Spanish players in Grand slams, excluding top ranked Rafel Nadal, today alone: 1

Matches won by American players in Grand Slams, excluding top ranked Andy Roddick, today alone: 3

Matches won by Swiss players in Grand Slams, excluding top ranked Roger Federer, today alone: 1

Katie O'Brien should never be given a wildcard again


To be fair to Katie O'Brien, she avoided the classic British failure of winning the first set, leading by a break in the second then losing. And wow, she avoided that hard. Now to be fair, she was playing the world number 47 and a three time Grand Slam semi-finalist. Except those Grand Slam finals were in the mid 1990s and her opponent is 40. We'll leave aside what exactly it says about women's tennis that a 40 year old is in the top 50 (but as a hint, it says its a complete joke), but you would still expect somebody a good 15 years younger to put up a fight.

However, Katie O'Brien contrived to lose the first set 6-0, before at least battling back to only lose the second set 7-5. That was her 8th Wimbledon and she has won only 1 match. Today alone she won £11,500 and has probably banked nearly £80,000 in her career. Its time she was told "never again" and made to qualify herself. Given she used to be in the top 100, she might just about manage too. But almost certainly won't.

What happens if it keeps raining?

The roof at Wimbledon is a fantastic addition, allowing us to avoid repeats of matches from the 1980s in order to watch actual tennis. Of course, Dokic v Schiavone had us all crying out for the large "R" in the corner of our screen again, but that can't be helped. However the roof raises one very interesting question. What happens if it keeps raining?

Lets imagine no play is possible at all on the outside courts for all of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Wimbledon will essentially be a one court tournament. As a result, would the order of play for those days just be a stream of Mondays cancelled matches getting finished on the only court available? On one hand it is unfair if people pay for centre court tickets and end up watching matches that should be on Court Infinity. But the only other alternative is just to keep playing the Top 4 matches and end up with a situation where Murray has reached Round 4 while some players haven't started Round 1. I wonder if the LTA have a plan in place.

Why do the BBC only really care about Wimbledon?

  Henman is only involved in the finals of grand slams as a pundit, which is the exact opposite of how his career went


The coverage at Wimbledon is fantastic, with streams available to watch from numerous courts meaning you can almost avoid women's matches entirely. A number of top ex-players are in the studio and commentating and there is a highlights on every night. Compare this with the French and Australian Open where the coverage is as follows:

Rounds 1 to 4: Red button coverage, of the main court only, with only commentary and no studio analysis. Often, the commentary is done by that Scottish guy that definitely does football and golf too, and appears to go missing without even being referred to once we reach:

Quarter Finals: If Murray is playing, a studio is found. Sue Barker is wheeled out from where ever it is the BBC keep her. There is a chance that the match will be on BBC 2. However if it looks likely to clash with Country Tracks or Homes under the Hammer then the red button it is. Even at the Australian Open at 4am, the match may not be justified ahead of the rolling 24 news coverage.

Semi Finals: If Murray is playing, this stage is suddenly deemed acceptable to cancel whatever else the BBC was planning on showing. Optimistically, schedulers appear to believe games last about 20 minutes and it isn't soon before Sue Barkers dismembered voice is advising people tuning in for Songs of Praise that it will actually be on BBC2, as if they were just waiting for her order before checking one of the other channels. The other semi final (or both if its not Murray) are kept on the Red Button.

Final: The BBC pretends it cared all along. Tim Henman is in the studio and there is some proper discussion. Viewers are no doubt left perplexed at how there appears to be a major tennis final on their tvs when there hasn't even been a hint of an actual tournament taking place. Many probably believe the French Open is merely a Federer v Nadal playoff, with the other players only invited to Wimbledon.