TENNIS: Wimbledon Round Four (?),
Jul. 1st, 2014 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllIt seems that Wimbledon has become ‘Wimby’.
I started watching last night when play resumed after they’d closed the Centre Court roof. I was impressed by Murray’s win. You would have thought Andreson would have got a lot more aces, and even though he came back into the match and fought well, there was just more to Murray’s game.
As the Centre Court prepared for the next match, I watched the resumption of the Makarova vs. Radwanska match, which just turned out to last a game. Well done to the Russian for winning it like that. Rain delays can change the tenor of a match, although you couldn’t ask for better than leading 5-0 in the second set. Breaking serve to win under those circumstances is really well done. And so, as in the French, Radwanska, Li and Williams are out, leaving Halep the highest seed, although everyone will be talking about Sharapova (and probably Kvitova) and all these new, or new to this level, players who seem to be hungrier and better. It was a similar story last year and not all the names are the same as the French either. We’ll see what develops this week.
Meanwhile, for all that they talked it up, even without knowing quite how hefty Djokovic’s head to head with Tsonga was, I fully expected Djokovic to win relatively easily, as he did in the French this year and the year when he faced four or five match points. Granted, he played brilliantly, punishing Tsonga for any looseness and making the Frenchman play at his best to keep up with him in the third. It wasn’t dull.
But it did eat up any Today at Wimbledon and made Sue Barker and Tim Henman have to fill for a bit. I don’t understand why they schedule Today at Wimbledon at eight when the sun sets later than that and play often goes beyond nine on most courts, weather permitting. It’s as if there’s no commitment to the show, even though a round-up show analysing all the results and giving people who watched one match the chance to see another good one, let alone people who haven’t seen the matches played earlier in the day. That coupled with the wacky tone the show sometimes/too often adopts feels like a let down. I think the TV people and the commentariat, who generally are insiders, need to talk more to the people who came to Wimbledon for the first time, for whom a ticket there is a bit like a golden ticket, allowing them to walk around courts they’ve grown up seeing on TV every year, to take their seats so that their heads can move side to side, following the ball, amazed, up close, at the skills on display. P’raps then, they’d be a little more cavalier.
I started watching last night when play resumed after they’d closed the Centre Court roof. I was impressed by Murray’s win. You would have thought Andreson would have got a lot more aces, and even though he came back into the match and fought well, there was just more to Murray’s game.
As the Centre Court prepared for the next match, I watched the resumption of the Makarova vs. Radwanska match, which just turned out to last a game. Well done to the Russian for winning it like that. Rain delays can change the tenor of a match, although you couldn’t ask for better than leading 5-0 in the second set. Breaking serve to win under those circumstances is really well done. And so, as in the French, Radwanska, Li and Williams are out, leaving Halep the highest seed, although everyone will be talking about Sharapova (and probably Kvitova) and all these new, or new to this level, players who seem to be hungrier and better. It was a similar story last year and not all the names are the same as the French either. We’ll see what develops this week.
Meanwhile, for all that they talked it up, even without knowing quite how hefty Djokovic’s head to head with Tsonga was, I fully expected Djokovic to win relatively easily, as he did in the French this year and the year when he faced four or five match points. Granted, he played brilliantly, punishing Tsonga for any looseness and making the Frenchman play at his best to keep up with him in the third. It wasn’t dull.
But it did eat up any Today at Wimbledon and made Sue Barker and Tim Henman have to fill for a bit. I don’t understand why they schedule Today at Wimbledon at eight when the sun sets later than that and play often goes beyond nine on most courts, weather permitting. It’s as if there’s no commitment to the show, even though a round-up show analysing all the results and giving people who watched one match the chance to see another good one, let alone people who haven’t seen the matches played earlier in the day. That coupled with the wacky tone the show sometimes/too often adopts feels like a let down. I think the TV people and the commentariat, who generally are insiders, need to talk more to the people who came to Wimbledon for the first time, for whom a ticket there is a bit like a golden ticket, allowing them to walk around courts they’ve grown up seeing on TV every year, to take their seats so that their heads can move side to side, following the ball, amazed, up close, at the skills on display. P’raps then, they’d be a little more cavalier.
