It’s the Tennis equivalent to Cricket’s Lord’s. It’s the only place wherein even an Andre Agassi was or a Serena Williams is, forced to abandon their colors and instead appear in whites. It’s the one place where the sublime Roger Federer would want to win every single time and this is the one title which he puts above even his maiden French Open title. Players winning this have seldom remained the same, their lives have often changed for the better. Ask Rafael Nadal, who despite his unprecedented run at the French Open calls this, his favourite tournament in the world. They call it the ‘Mecca of Tennis’, some refer to it by the postal code that the place is attached with, SW19. Whichever way you call, whichever way you look at it, Wimbledon for most professionals remains the pinnacle of the sport. And its that time of the year again folks! Its 22nd of June 2009, time for yet another edition of the “Championships” to unfold.
Without playing around too much with words, lets get to this one thing straight! With the unfortunate withdrawal of the defending champion Nadal, 14-Slam champion Federer will begin the tournament as the mighty favourite. This is obviously not to say that others do not have even a semblance of chance, but when you consider the fact that Federer is yet to lose to anyone apart from Rafa in Grand Slam finals, it’s hard to bet against him. Ofcourse there’s a first time for most things in life, but you cannot bet for them to happen with confidence, can you? And so barely a fortnight after he created history at Paris, Federer stands to make an encore again; this time at SW19 by regaining his precious Wimbledon title and thereby going past Pete Sampras and standing atop the tree, all by himself! In Federer’s words himself though, the focus is now on the 1st few rounds, get a hang of things before he can think of bigger things. He’s come into this tournament without participating in his traditional warm-up tournament at Halle though that really shouldn’t be too much of a concern for him. In the words of one of my friends, the 1st 2-3 rounds in the tournament and he should be sufficiently ‘warmed-up’!
Following the withdrawal of Nadal, Federer, the no. 2 seed is slated to start the proceedings on Center Court today. He’s scheduled to meet, French Open finalist Robin Soderling in the 4th Round and if players stay true to their seedings, he might end up bumping into Fernando Verdasco in the Quarter finals then. While Soderling has more than a decent chance of making it to the 4th Round, the same cannot be said of Verdasco. He’s had a dream run in 2009 so far but his form on grass will always be a worry for his fans. Soderling’s form too will be interesting to follow and it’ll be worth watching the way he handles his new found attention. Novak Djokovic is drawn with Federer in the bottom half and the Serb who’s had an indifferent year, to say the least, is the favourite to meet the 5-time champion in the Semis. Lack of confidence and not fitness will be the biggest factor for the Serbian World no. 4. The man’s lost his no. 3 ranking, had some tough losses to Rafa, was then dumped out of Paris in the 2nd round and finally couldn’t win at Halle losing to Tommy Haas. For all his success at the Masters Series, Djokovic has not been as consistent at the Slams as he’d like to be and the coming two weeks gives him an opportunity to right that wrong. Other people that can cause an upset or two in this section of the draw include Haas himself, who must be on a high post Halle and then you have Mardy Fish, who can always be a threat on grass. You do have names such as Frenchman Tonsga too on the list, but on grass really, he’s never known to be a threat and that’s the case with most of the other famous names in the draw.
Juan Martin Del Potro heads the revamped top half of the draw and despite some good names in there, it would be a great sight to see him and local man, Andy Murray making it through to the semi-finals. The club of ‘Big Four’ can now safely be renamed to ‘Big Five’ and Potro will be keen to make further inroads on the tour. The man whose confidence must be sky-high after his French Open exploits will be “up against it” to put it mildly should he end up meeting Murray; their not-so-great history and the partisan crowd could be a handful for most but the world no. 5 during his win over Tsonga at Paris showed us that he’s more than capable of handling a boisterous crowd. The British media meanwhile, not surprisingly though, has already gone, well overboard, in its attempt to coronate their son, Andy Murray. The man will be super-confident following his success at the Queens but he’ll be well aware that carrying so many expectations isn’t the lightest of things in the world, moreover his form in the 2 Slams post his breakthrough performance at the US Open last year hasn’t been very great either. Nonetheless, you’d expect the man to ‘come off age’ at some point and what better opportunity to do that in front of your home crowd, a crowd that deserves to see one of their own, as the champion!
One thing; the top half of the draw, is quite easily the tougher one of the two. Some really players who can do well on grass, feature in there. Wawrinka, Berdych, Ferrer, they can all play well and then veterans such as Hewitt and Safin cannot be ruled out of any fast-court tournaments at any stage of their careers. The one player though who’s most capable of stopping a Del Potro-Andy Murray semi-final clash is the other Andy, Roddick. The American who’s had a wonderful year so far, his performance on clay the biggest testimony, will be more than keen to improve upon his two Runners-Up performances [’04, ‘05] at Wimbledon. If his serve can click, which it should on grass, one can never be sure of how far can this man go. An ever-improving 20 odd Potro should be able to take out the old-timer in Roddick but it could be a close call still.
Finally, a word on the man who wouldn’t be there. All these years, I personally used to think that his style of play would end up curtailing his career and all these years, I was proved wrong. But finally after nearly 5 years of running around the courts, a period during which he claimed 6 Slams, 15 Masters and numerous other titles, Rafa’s knees have given way! As the man’s stated himself, this was one of the most difficult decisions of his career, but I hope in hindsight this would prove to be a blessing of sorts. His scheduling was always going to give him trouble [5 tournaments in 5 weeks on clay], especially now that he wouldn’t be 19 or 20 ever again! Hopefully in the season ahead and going into 2010 and beyond, his uncle and coach Toni Nadal and his entire camp will think twice before charting out his road. I don’t see anyone including Rafa to change their style of play all of a sudden, that’ll be too much to expect and the World no. 1 will continue to employ his high-intensity game. The only thing that his fans can thus expect is to see him tone down his schedule, so that come Slams, the man can be at full fitness, peak fitness. For the time being though, he’ll have to remain content watching the ’Championships’ from his home in Spain. Expect the man to make a strong comeback on the hardcourts of America, starting at Montreal. The tournament will surely miss him, but I suspect that even with him around, Federer would have won no. 15. After all, lighting hardly ever strikes twice!
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