Today the weather in SW19 is expected to be considerably better than it was yesterday, but there is no tennis being played at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Lords of Wimbledon are apparently too grand to provide any tennis for the many people who will not be working, so might be near a TV set on the middle Sunday of the tournament. That means a whole weekend without live tennis to watch, barring the fairly routine matches that were played by Mauresmo and Sharapova yesterday, before the heavens reopened after less than one hour of play had occurred on Centre Court. Isn't Wimbledon supposed to be one of the world's greatest sporting events?
An Order of Play has been provided for Monday. The men in the bottom half of the draw, who last played on Thursday, all still need to play their third-round matches on Monday, while the fourth round is taking place for the top half of the draw. That intriguing Nalbandian-Baghdatis third-round match has been exiled to Court 11 on Monday, where few people will get to see it. The men who make it through to the semifinals from the bottom half will probably need to win three best-of-five matches on three consecutive days. Tomorrow's fourth-round winners will have a day off before Wednesday's quarterfinals, assuming that the weather does not interfere yet again. The women will face similar scheduling problems, but at least they are not playing best-of-five.
I had a frustrating day on Centre Court yesterday. The start of play was delayed, and then after two hours, my new lens eventually got a workout on Amelie, and (predictably) on Rafa during his warmup before play was suspended. After that, I read a book, listened to the weather updates over the tannoy, and finally left the grounds after play was abandoned around 7 pm. To be honest, if I'd known how the day would turn out, I would have stayed at home. The retractable roof will be ready in 2009. It would have solved all my problems yesterday (and those of the men on Centre Courtwhose matches were postponed), but not, of course, the problems of any players scheduled for the outside courts, or even Court 1.
Finally, Pete is flying to England today, so will be up and ready to go in SW19 from tomorrow. I'm picking him up at the airport - must now start worrying about what to wear, in case he describes it in a future post, as for the TW'ers in LA the other evening! -- Rosangel