You won’t hear Rafael Nadal publicly expressing relief with Milos Raonic’s sudden demise on Day 3 at Wimbledon, but my best guess is he was privately just this side of overjoyed.
Nadal’s anticipated rough opening week just got a lot easier with Gilles Muller waiting in the third round instead of the massive-serving Canadian Raonic. When the draw came out, it left Rafa probably facing Raonic’s booming serves in the third round and Juan Martin Del Potro in the fourth.
Now, who knows. Not only is Raonic out of the way with what looks like a groin pull that forced his retirement at 3-2 in the first set, but Del Potro lost his opening set tiebreak to little Olivier Rochus (their match in suspension until Thursday). If Delpo is to advance, he’s looking at three more sets minimum and back to back playing days.
Nadal otherwise had a fairly snap day on Wednesday, broken once by young Ryan Sweeting, the former U.S. Open junior champion from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who looked pretty nervous in the early going and, though he smoothed himself out for the most part, still finished with 10 double faults.
Sweeting will continue his drive toward top-50 and he’s an American who merits a close watch. His first serve is good enough for now, but his second needs work. Nadal had time to adjust his socks and realign his water bottles before having to rip back Sweeting No. 2 delivery.
For Nadal, he’s got some score-settling with the lefty Muller, who beat 19-year-old Rafa in the second round of the 2005 Wimbledon and who once stunned Andy Roddick in the opening round at the U.S. Open. But it’s hard to see him as a major problem. His serve isn’t that big and he’s not going out-bang Nadal from the baseline.
As for Raonic, his big serve would be a Rafa problem. He’s having an MRI on the groin. Too bad. He was having a very notable year, but this is a second significant injury. He had retired from a clay match at Estoril with a back problem in April.
Meanwhile . . . . . . . ..
* Venus Williams was down 1-5 in the first set, but made the third round by winning 8-6 in the third over 40-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm, who never exceeded 97 mph with her marshmallow first serve. Venus’ movement is not up to her usual standard, but it’s still better than most. For me, she’s 50-50 to make the second week of Wimbledon. . .
* Mardy Fish of Los Angeles was broken just once in a straight-set win over Denis Istomin and was 50-11 on first serve. . .
* Alex Bogomolov of Miami does it again, needing only 92 minutes to take down Juan Ignacio Chela in straights and get a third-round shot at Tomas Berdych. . .
* Fashion? I don’t have the slightest interest in what the Williams sisters are wearing. I want to know what Bethanie Mattek-Sands is taking on court, and it’s not easy to be as quirky as Mattek-Sands at Wimbledon, where they’re restrictive on color. Today: Knee-high stockings, white of course, and she arrived with a white warmup jacket festooned with white tennis balls. . .
* By the way. . .You know that Venus’ clothing line is called Eleven. Have you ever seen anyone, club player or pro, wearing Williams’ apparel?. . .
* The Brits went home happy with two wins and two losses. Andy Murray and young Laura Robson were winners, but Anne Keothavong and Heather Watson, the teenager from Guernsey who trains at Bollettieri’s, was beaten. . .
* This bears watching today: Andreas Haider-Maurer of Austria, who hits the hell out of his serves, takes the 39 aces he recorded in his opening win against former Wimbledon runner-up David Nalbandian. Haider-Maurer came to Wimbledon with a 2-5 record and just 37 aces and trumped that in his first round here. . .
* And if that’s not enough aces for you, Andy Roddick draws Feliciano Lopez in the third round. The last two times they’ve played (Roddick is 7-0 lifetime), they combined for 108 aces, including 50 at Queens a couple weeks ago, where Roddick beat Lopez for the seventh time. . .
* I don’t know if you saw that overblown piece in the papers a couple days ago, informing us that tall players were taking over the game. Yep, there’s a few more tall players out there, but that doesn’t automatically translate into success. On Wednesday, 6-foot-11 Ivo Karlovic lost in straight sets, 6-foot-5 Raonic took a bad tumble and retired and 6-foot-6 Del Potro is down a set . . . to 5-foot-5 Rochus. . .
See you tomorrow.