If you get a chance to watch any highlights of today’s action at Wimbledon then make sure you do so because you’ll be witnessing the professional tennis equivalent of a shooting star; Roger Federer, arguably Tennis’ greatest player ever, failed to make the last-eight of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time since 2004 (Roland Garros).
This incident though is only the headline act in a number of other incidents that took place right across the Wimbledon complex today. It seems we’re going from one complaint to another so far this year be it from the fans and complaints over the availability of tickets for the action or from the players complaining over the courts themselves. The tagline, Whacky Wednesday, has emerged as the likes of Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova among others blamed the apparently slipperier than usual grass for either their defeats or their retirements as no less than seven players pulled out over the last 12 hours due to injury.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Marin Cilic (who was looking like a potential quarter-final opponent for Andy Murray), Radek Stepanek, John Isner and Rafael Nadal’s conqueror Steve Darcis were among those to pull-out through injury as what seemed to be just an excuse for slightly below par performances earlier in the week is looking to be a complaint with some actual substance to it as the number of retirements grows to unparalleled and hopefully never again equalled or bettered heights. It may go some way too to describing why pre-tournament favourite, Rafa Nadal, went out with such a whimper in the previous round as surely with his injury history these conditions will have affected him to quite a sizeable extent.
Many people are taking sides in the debate over the courts as to whether or not there’s any foundation to the complaints but that’s a debate to be saved for another time and will surely role on for a long time but it’s definitely an interesting backdrop to the usual drama of the tournament if nothing else.
However, onto a more positive note for the British fans, Andy Murray cantered through his second round clash with a straight-sets triumph over Taiwanese World Number 75, Lu Yen-Hsun 6-3 6-3 7-5. Murray has previously had troublesome encounters with Lu but was on top of it today as he dispatched of the 2008 Olympian with ease to claim his 14th straight win on grass. He is now in line to face Spain’s Tommy Robredo in the next round, who dispatched of France’s Nicolas Mahut in straight sets earlier in the day.
The World Number 116, Sergiy Stakhovsky, made up for the lack of drama in Murray’s match however as he dispatched of World Number 3 Roger Federer in four sets. Such was the profile of the Ukranian before his victory over the Wimbledon legend that we’ve since seen an abundance of articles hit the net titled “Who on Earth Is Sergiy Stakhovsky” but believe me he left no doubt in the Centre Court crowd’s mind as to who he was after the performance he delivered to stun the silky Swiss star; not bad for a man who’s never beaten a top-15 player before. Each and every set went down to the wire yet Stakhovsky came out on top in three of the four that were played as Federer was given a taste of his own medicine; the 17-time Grand Slam champion couldn’t find a way to beat the man who’s serve-and-volley loving style really gave the Swiss problems throughout.
We’ll be covering every day of the Championship from here on in but for the extensive results and all the news from today’s action at Wimbledon be sure to head over to the official Wimbledon website!