LONDON — The London Times' Giles Smith reported on one opening-round match as follows: “A titanic encounter, an astounding chapter in the history of tennis warfare, a relentless, blood-soaked, face-melting battle whose outcome was uncertain until its last blow was struck and its mentally and physically drained combatant embraced in exhaustion at the net. These are some of the things that Caroline Wozniacki vs. Arantxa Parra Santonja was not.”
VENUS' DRESS: Fellow fashionista Bethanie Mattek-Sands commented on Venus Williams’ floppy, lacy wedding cake of a dress with a hole in the back, saying, “Very '70s, and '70s are in right now. So the high-waisted shorts are cool. I really like the back of it, the open back. I've always loved that. I have to ask her if the flowy sleeves kind of affect her hitting, but it didn't look like it. Everything seemed to stay. I thought it was a really cool outfit, and I think it was one of my favorites.”
MONKEY OFF MY BACK II?: It wasn't exactly a young Pete Sampras saying he was glad he was no longer the defending U.S. Open because the monkey was off his back. Still, Novak Djokovic candidly told IT that now that there is less focus on him (since his undefeated streak was broken in Paris), “it was kind of a relief…because it's been a very, very successful five, six months for me, but very long as well and exhausting. I've played so many matches. So I needed some time to relax and I'm happy to see that I'm playing well again, I'm mentally really fresh to have more success.”
HEADLINES
WEEPING WINNER SERENA MAKES EMOTIONAL RETURN
SERENA FIGHTS BACK TEARS AS VICTORY ENDS NIGHTMARE
BUSINESS AS USUAL FOR SUBLIME FEDERER
ISNER-MAHUT II: LESS OF A SEQUEL, MORE OF A REUNION TOUR
ISNER AND MAHUT RETURN WITH ABRIDGED VERSIONS
DIVAS AND DRAMA: The Guardian noted that Tuesday, “It was Diva Day on Centre Court, where Diana Ross, herself no stranger to drama, looked down from the front row of the Royal Box as a weeping Serena Williams buried her face in a towel at the end of an emotional return to Wimbledon.”
MOST CUTTING COMMENTARY: After a shot almost decapitated a lineseperson, Radio Wimbledon claimed, “The line judge being cut in half always draws laughter from the audience.”
NOW HERE'S A TOUGH QUESTION!: After saying that he cooked almost every day, Rafael Nadal was asked if he was as good a cook as he was a tennis player. (He said he wasn't.)
A DAY AT THE MOVIES
•Commenting on the John Isner–Nicolas Mahut sequel, Jim White noted, “As is being currently demonstrated in by ‘The Hangover 2,’ the sequel rarely matches the original.”
•It was reported that Andy Murray watched the movie “Scream,” at which point he was asked, “Do you always watch horror movies to relax.”
•Reflecting on Serena's saga, one British paper said, “Hers is the sort of story that film-makers would never dare to dream up.”
POWER LUNCH: According to writer Kevin Mitchell, “A distinguished party of four — in the names of Nadal, Djokovic, Federer and Murray — have reserved their places for a second sitting at Wimbledon.”
OF JOURNEYMEN AND MIDDLE-RANKERS: The Guardian's Barney Ronay dismissed the Isner-Mahut re-match as “the most eagerly awaited meeting between two journeyman middle-rankers in the history of this venerable tournament.”
HYBRID LIGHT: There’s such a natural color sensibility at Wimbledon, a celebration of soft greens of every shade. But under the still relatively new roof, with its translucent covering, there’s an odd, almost yellow tone, a diffused combination of soft natural light and intense arena lighting.
YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN BRITAIN WHEN…: A broadcaster says poor Ryan Sweeting (during his loss to Nadal) “could do nothing else but balloon up that volley.”
THE FIRST TATTOOED WOMAN TO EVER WHERE EYE BLACK AND LONG WHITE SOCCER-STYLE SOCKS AT WIMBLEDON: Mattek Sands.
SAY IT AIN'T SO: Mattek-Sands said her annual travel costs are $150,000.
ROGER HAD TO WORK ON HIS CASUALNESS AND THEN DEVELOPED INTO SOLID CASUAL: When IT asked Roger Federer to comment on his sense of balance and the ease he has in his game, he said, “It has helped me with injuries. Yes, my game is somewhat casual, but in a good way, because I had to work on my casualness. It was very quickly pointed out that if I'm losing I'm not trying, and if I'm winning it's an amazing situation. So I had to really tie my game together, make it solid casual, really. I was able to do that. I worked extremely hard on my fitness and my mental part of the game. All those things eventually came together and I started to be able to glide around the court with little effort and be very explosive, though. I think that's I've done really well. I think it almost comes out the most on grass today…When I played, I feel so natural on it. You can cut the points short if you want to. You can play aggressive. You can hit two-shot tennis, which then creates some very different type of points. That's the kind of stuff I love doing. Unfortunately, all the conditions have slowed down immensely over the years… so you need to find different ways of winning the point, which is fine. I like to grind it out and go through 10-, 20-shot rallies sometimes to win the point and break the opponent's will down. The game has definitely changed with strings and balls over the last 10 years. I’m happy to see that I'm playing well again, that I'm mentally really fresh to have more success.”
DEFENDING U.S. TENNIS: Andy Roddick denied assertions that tennis has taken a hit in his homeland because an American-born man hasn’t won a Slam singles title since the Texan captured the ’03 U.S. Open, saying, “If you want to talk about an ‘Is tennis dying?’ article, let's go by participation numbers, retail numbers, prize money — up, up, up, up, up. I hear this, ‘Tennis is dying.’ Maybe it's water cooler talk. But I'll put more stock in the business of tennis in our country growing as opposed to having fun conversations around a water cooler…If you look at racket sales, USTA memberships, across the board, it's been up. Do we have four guys in the top five in the world? No, we don't. That's about the only difference. That doesn't mean that tennis is dying. It's an international sport. I feel like a lot of times people refuse to accept that back home, which is unfortunate. It's as international a sport as there is as far as popularity. I feel like it doesn't get its maybe fair shake…So I like to deal in facts, and the facts say the whole dying thing.”
