By Randy Walker
Brad Gilbert, the ever observant, verbose, tweeting sage of tennis, called, via Twitter, Week One of Wimbledon the craziest one he could ever recall.
It’s hard to argue with Mr. @BGTennisNation.
Week One at Wimbledon provided enough history, records and nostalgia to fill its on version of the All England Club’s Compendium. Consider the drama and historical events that took place during the first six days of The Championships.
- Venus Williams, the five-time Wimbledon champion, suffered only her second ever Wimbledon first-round exit – and her worst-ever Wimbledon loss – falling to Russia’s Elena Vesnina 6-1, 6-3 in what could end up being her final Wimbledon singles match. The 32-year-old, who suffers from the energy-draining Sjögren’s syndrome, said she “planned” to return to Wimbledon again, but ranking and energy-level may prevent that from happening. An interesting symbolism for Williams is that her loss occurred 33 years to the day that another great African-American tennis pioneer and Wimbledon champion Arthur Ashe played his final Wimbledon match, losing to No. 139-ranked Chris Kachel of Australia 6-4, 7-6, 6-3. Ashe’s loss came on the infamous “Graveyard Court” – Court No. 2 – and the loss Monday for Williams came on the “new” Court No. 2 at the All England Club.
- Andy Roddick gave an elongated wave – as well as a hand kiss – to the crowd at Centre Court Saturday following his 2-6, 7-6 (8), 6-4, 6-3, loss to No. 7 seed David Ferrer in the third round, indicating to many that it could have been a farewell to Wimbledon and Centre Court. Said Roddick to reporters if he just played his final Wimbledon match, “`If I don’t have a definitive answer in my own mind, it’s going to be tough for me to articulate a definitive answer to you.”
- Lleyton Hewitt, the 2002 Wimbledon men’s singles champion and a wild-card entrant, was defeated in the first round by Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, ranked No. 5. Hewitt’s exit, along with countryman Bernie Tomic, ensured that no Australian man reached the second round at Wimbledon since 1936. Like Roddick and Williams, Hewitt may have also played his final Wimbledon singles match.
- Kim Clijsters, unlike Williams, Roddick and Hewitt, has publicly said this is her final Wimbledon, and is into the fourth round with impressive wins over Jelena Jankovic, Andrea Hlavackova and Vera Zvonareva. She plays Angelique Kerber in the fourth round, and if she wins, potentially world No. 1 Maria Sharapova in the quarterfinals. Wimbledon in the only major where Clijsters has not reached at least the final.
- Night tennis has flourished at the All England Club as darkness has caused for the Centre Court roof to be closed for some of the most dramatic matches of the first week to be finished. Andy Murray’s 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 6-1 win over Marcos Baghdatis on Saturday night was the latest finishing match in Wimbledon history, Murray closing out victory at 11:02 pm – two minutes past a Wimbledon-mandated curfew.
- Six-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer kept his hopes to reaching his 33rd straight major tournament quarterfinal by fending off the upset bid of Julien Benneteau, coming back from two-sets-to-love down to defeat the Frenchman 4-6, 6-7 (3), 6-2, 7-6 (6), 6-1. Federer was only two points from defeat five times in the match, but never faced match point. A loss would have been his earliest at Wimbledon since 2002 and his earliest at a major tournament since 2004. Federer’s second-round win over Fabio Fognini was played in front of Prince Charles, making his first appearance at the All England Club since 1970.
Roger Federer - Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic registered one of the biggest upsets in the history of The Championships by defeating No. 2 seed, two-time champion and 11-time major tournament champion Rafael Nadal in a stunning 6-7 (9), 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 second-round upset, Nadal’s earliest major tournament loss since 2005.
- Sam Querrey and Marin Cilic played in the second-longest Wimbledon singles match ever, Cilic prevailing in five hours, 31 minutes in a 7-6 (6), 6-4, 6-7 (2), 6-7 (3), 17-15 thriller. The match was still well-shy of the John Isner-Nicolas Mahut 11 hour, five-minute Wimbledon match from 2010, played over three days, Isner winning 70-68 in the fifth set. “Just another match now, thanks to Isner-Mahut,” Querrey quipped to reporters of his epic with Cilic.
- Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakstan won only the second “golden set” in professional tennis history when she won all 24 points in a set when she beat Sara Errani of Italy, the 2012 French Open runner-up, 6-0, 6-4. Said the Shvedova of the 15-minute perfect first set, “I had no idea. All the people start to clap and scream. I was like, What’s going on? I even smiled. I was, like, ‘okay, they want to see a good match.’ Then in the gym after the match, when I was cooling down, my coach came, and he’s like, ‘Did you know that you did not lose a point?’ I was like, ‘Really?’ It was incredible. I still cannot believe.” The only other player to perform a golden set in professional tennis was American Bill Scanlon, who turned the trick against Marcos Hocevar in his 6-2, 6-0 win in the first round of Delray Beach, Fla., in 1983.
- Serena Williams belted 23 aces when she defeated Jie Zheng of China in a 6-7 (5), 6-2, 9-7 nail-biter in the third round Saturday. The 23 aces are the most ever in a women’s match at Wimbledon, according to THE BUD COLLINS HISTORY OF TENNIS. Williams, who held the previous mark at Wimbledon when she hit 20 aces in her semifinal win over Elena Dementieva back in 2009, did not lose her serve Saturday against her Chinese opponent. Serena’s ace total fell one shy of equaling the all-time record set by Kaia Kanepi who hit 24 aces past Lucie Safarova in the first round of Tokyo in 2008.
- American qualifier Brian Baker, completely out of professional tennis for most of the last six years due to a plethora of injuries, reached the fourth round as a qualifier with wins over Rui Machado, Jarkko Nieminen and Benoit Paire. Charlie Bricker of WorldTennisMagazine.com was the first to report of Baker’s remarkable comeback to professional tennis in his article from April from the USTA Pro Circuit event in Sarasota, Florida: http://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/6636
What will the second week of Wimbledon bring? We will soon find out, but it will be tough to beat an historic first six days of this year’s Championships.