I'm a bit late on my blog post on Wimbledon this year - one of my most favorite sporting tournaments. What makes Wimbledon so special is, of course, the court. Not many lawn tennis tours in the modern day are really played on lawn. The reason is pretty obvious - lawn courts are terribly difficult to maintain in pristine condition. This year's Wimbledon just proved how difficult maintaining lawn courts can be. In what later became an unfortunate incident, the All England Lawn Tennis Club's main groundsman retired last year. Perhaps not so coincidentally, everyone playing at SW19 this year have been slipping and sliding on some lush grass. To be frank, as a viewer of Wimbledon this year, I've felt at times as though I was watching an ice skating show, not so much the showpiece event of world tennis. From Maria Sharapova to Victoria Azarenka, tennis stars have been falling flat on the ground. Perhaps the nastiest fall of them all was suffered by Juan Martin Del Potro during his quarterfinal game against Spaniard David Ferrer. Luckily for Del Potro, his 6'6" height means that the court is only three steps wide, so he later decided that he would win the game without having to sprint after the ball at all.
Slippery or not, lawn generally is hailed as the surface that separates the legends from the lads. To win on grass, one needs a sharp and accurate serve, some great court sense and a rather cool head. Blind slapping won't work here. Perhaps that explains why the genius of Roger Federer held sway over The Championships for so long, winning the title seven times! That's what makes lawn tennis so exciting - a moment of callousness can cost you a game, a set, maybe even a match. And so, even though I'd blogged last year about Wimbledon being anybody's game, one year on, nothing much has changed about that theme. In fact, things have only gotten eerier! Rafael Nadal, flying to London after winning Roland Garros for the eighth time, was put on a flight back to Mallorca very early by an unheard Steve Darcis. Maria Sharapova, the powerhouse of female tennis, slipped, skated and slid out in the first week as well. Victoria Azarenka barely put a foot on court before packing her bags due to injury. Defeat also greeted Caroline Wozniacki early in the tourney with the Dane blaming the grass for her undoing. Serena Williams - a player so dominant that Andy Murray thought of challenging her to play him - lasted long enough to dominate the little known players in the first week but bowed out in the quarters against a reinvented Sabine Lisicki. But perhaps the greatest upset of them all - Roger Federer, holder of every known record in Wimbledon and world tennis history, crashing out in the second round to Sergiy Stakhovsky. Stakhovsky may well make it to many a quiz question in the near future if Federer decides to retire anytime soon.
What really made the difference this year? Was it the grass? Was it a dying old generation? Or was it simply the growing prowess of unknown names in world tennis? The answer to me seemed fearlessness. While many big guns seemed hounded by their past glory and pressed by intimidating expectations, the little unheralded kids of world tennis played a freewheeling brand of tennis largely unseen in past years and highly suited for lawn courts. Sabine Lisicki's defeat of Serena Williams was particularly revealing on that front. With the big American expected to steamroll the unfancied German with a barrage of aces and whizzing winners, Sabine let loose her passions on court and played particularly aggressive tennis with little regard for the scoreboard.
Perhaps the grass was rather slippery. But then again, it was the same old grass for Sabine Lisicki and Del Potro as it was for Rafael Nadal or Serena Williams. Grass often tends to favor the brave. For that reason, the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon would probably always be for anybody's taking.
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| The Fancied Quartet: All back home |
What really made the difference this year? Was it the grass? Was it a dying old generation? Or was it simply the growing prowess of unknown names in world tennis? The answer to me seemed fearlessness. While many big guns seemed hounded by their past glory and pressed by intimidating expectations, the little unheralded kids of world tennis played a freewheeling brand of tennis largely unseen in past years and highly suited for lawn courts. Sabine Lisicki's defeat of Serena Williams was particularly revealing on that front. With the big American expected to steamroll the unfancied German with a barrage of aces and whizzing winners, Sabine let loose her passions on court and played particularly aggressive tennis with little regard for the scoreboard.
Perhaps the grass was rather slippery. But then again, it was the same old grass for Sabine Lisicki and Del Potro as it was for Rafael Nadal or Serena Williams. Grass often tends to favor the brave. For that reason, the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon would probably always be for anybody's taking.
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