Expect no half-baked performances at Wimbledon

WHILE the old boys, Richard

Bland and Louis Oosthuizen, were leading the charge on the Californian fairways of San Diego, at the start of the US Open, former champions were faring less well on grass, in the early rounds of the Cinch and Noventi Opens, in England and Germany.

Five times Queen’s Club winner, Andrew Murray, was dispatched by the big serving Italian No 1 Matteo Berretini, and 10 times Halle title holder, Roger Federer, was felled by equally flawless serving, young Canadian, Felix Auger-aliassime.

I am still of the opinion that Murray, after all the fanfare of his 2018 Australian Open retirement, should have stayed retired and that Federer should have followed suit, after his glorious wins at Wimbledon 2017 and the Australian 2018. But it’s clear that even with four children at home, both these great players are addicted to the thrill of competitive tennis.

Federer can probably nurture a glimmer of hope of picking up another Wimbledon title, (or a first Olympic one) now that at least one of his arch rivals is out of the fray. Nadal has announced he will not be playing either Wimbledon or the Olympics.

However, the mere fact so many top seeds were toppled at Halle – not least of all World No 2 Danil Medvedev, and World No 6 Alexander Zverev, and former champion Gael Monfils who suffered a shock straight sets defeat to our talented South African Lloyd Harris – is further proof there is a huge pool of emerging talent at large.

We can expect further upsets to the top tier at Wimbledon 2021. World No 4 Stefanos Tsitsipas remains the exception amongst the demise of top seeds at the Noventi Open. In the wake of his run to an epic Roland Garros Final against Novak Djokovic he was not physically beaten.

Instead he withdrew from both the singles and the doubles, which he had intended to play with his younger brother Pedros, for “personal reasons”.

Given he was informed of his grandmother’s death only minutes before he took to the court in that

Paris final, he can be forgiven for needing a ‘mental time out’ to get to grips with this devastating news before embarking on his grass campaign. Whoever dispatched that bad news to the Greek No 1, literally moments before he walked onto Court Philipe Chartriere to play the biggest game of his career to date, must be a human being devoid of any ounce of humanity whatsoever – either that, or a Serbian ‘counter intelligence agent’.

Despite the premature exit of the popular ex British No 1 Murray, at Queens Club during the

Queens Birthday celebrations, the appreciative local crowd had much to cheer about. British teenage phenomenon and wild card, Jack Draper, burst onto the scene.

In his maiden Masters main draw he saved two match points to dispatch No 3 seed, Italian Jannik Sinner, on a run into the quarter-finals. He lost to fellow Englishman, British No 2 Cameron Norrie.

Current British No 1, Dan Evans, who dished out a hefty defeat to Djokovic on clay in Monte Carlo, also progressed to the quarters – the first time that three English players have done so in the Open era. Evans fell to Berrettini, who is looking the likely winner today, provided his serve remains consistent.

So with Berrettini at Queens Club and Andrey Rublev in Halle being the last seeds left standing in these build-ups to Wimbledon, World No 1 and French Open Champion, Djokovic, will be relishing his chances of catching up to Nadal and Federer’s 20th singles trophy tally.

Wimbledon has announced it is part of the Government Events Research Programme, which is obviously why it will be the first Grand Slam event since the onset of Covid to allow full capacity crowds for all the Finals.

The theme this year is “It’s A Wimbledon Thing!”– a tribute to fandom.

The annual official film features a grass court tennis court cake in a re-enactment of The Great British Bake Off, so we can expect no halfbaked performances on the Centre Court, when this long-awaited and much missed Major rises again next week.