TENNIS WIMBLEDON CHAMPIONSHIPS: THE PLAYERS look on the second week as another competition. Survival in week one is the priority. Now they start again.
Now they meet the seeded players, expect tougher matches and as they get closer to next weekend there is more at stake. This week can make a career. No one remembers fourth-round losers.
Wimbledon’s peculiarity is that the players rest on Sunday. Even that short hiatus infuses a sense that the second week is almost a different competition. Three matches played, four to go and Andy Murray is not only still alive in the draw but is beginning to look like a champion. Of all the characters who expected to be here – and largely all of them are – only Federer looks better.
Murray’s opponent today is Stanislas Wawrinka, the 19th seed. Since 2008 the Scot has beaten him four times and lost once. The pair have never met on grass but they know each other well as Wawrinka is a regular practice partner. It’s not quite the level of closeness the Williams sisters have when they meet but similarly when Murray steps across the whitewash, or, titanium as it is now, it will be game-face time. And few can do taciturn aggression like Murray.
“When you go on the court you’re there to compete, regardless of whether you’re friends or not. It doesn’t change the way you go into the match,” he said.
“You kind of know each other’s games a little bit better than you might know some of the others that you don’t hit with. But it won’t make a difference. He’s a very solid all-court player. He’s got a solid serve. He moves well, is good off the baseline. He doesn’t come to the net too much. But when he does, I mean, he won the Olympic doubles so he can obviously volley reasonably well.”
And there is the rub. Murray is now seen as the biggest threat to Federer and how neat it would be if the other half of that medal-winning Swiss Olympic doubles team were to rough him up on centre court.
If Federer can get past Robin Soderling, first match up today, he will have the comfort of watching his compatriot and Murray go 12 rounds in the last match of the day. But what a task Soderling has before him.
At the French Open the Swede was asked to beat one of the greatest claycourt players ever, Rafael Nadal. He did just that causing one of the biggest Grand Slam shocks in history. If he was ever asked to complete a more difficult task then today’s would be it as Soderling will have to beat the best player to ever step on to a grasscourt for a place in the quarter-final.
When the French Open began Soderling had never before gone beyond the third round of a Grand Slam. Then came the improbable run to the final and here he is in the second week for the first time, facing the player who has beaten him in all 10 of their previous meetings. That’s the sort of streak that could give a champion confidence.
“Soderling has got a huge game and now he also has the taste of beating the top players and that only makes him more dangerous,” said Federer. “What stands out for me is that I’ve beaten him so many times and that gives me an incredible amount of confidence, knowing that if I do play my game well, I should be fine. But you never know. That’s why I have to be very careful.”
There are other hopefuls that should be classed as more than bit players to the Murray-Federer headline act. Andy Roddick meets the streaky Thomas Berdych on Court One. The 26-year-old American, runner-up in 2004 and 2005, made it to the semi-final at Queen’s this year but pulled out with an ankle injury. That seems to have cleared.
Lleyton Hewitt, too, seems to improve with each round as he works his way back from a hip injury. He meets Radek Stepanek, the Czech 23rd seed. Despite being a former winner, Hewitt is not seeded this year as his ranking plummeted.
The talented Spaniard Fernando Verdasco faces the multiple rocket launcher, Ivo Karlovic, who hit 46 aces last match, while fourth-seed Novak Djokovic meets Israeli player Dudi Sela, who has never gotten past the third round of a Grand Slam before and never beyond Wimbledon’s first round.
“I got an extreme amount of pressure and expectation in each event I play in,” said Djokovic. “I had to get used to that and set my mind. People are looking at me always as one of the favourites. I didn’t cope with that pressure really well at the start of the season. Maybe I lost myself a little bit,” added the Serb, who has operated under the radar until now.
No longer.
