Upset Alert
So far, most of this year's Wimbledon has gone mostly to form. Unlike the turmoil at Roland Garros last month, most of the upsets have been relatively minor. Though that trend continued yesterday, there were a fair amount of minor upsets. French Open semifinalist Ernest Gulbis crashed out to Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky. Gulbis is always a bit of an "unknown quantity," so it's not a huge surprise, but I expected him to make at least the fourth round. David Ferrer—the men's 7th seed—also lost in a wild, back-and-forth five-setter with Andrey Kuznetsov. Ferrer was bothered by a stomach issue last week and didn't look himself in either of his two matches here, despite saying that he would be good to go. Ferrer's loss snaps his 18-Slam streak of third round or better results. Victoria Azarenka was ousted as well in a mildly surprising upset. It was just Azarenka's third match back after missing several months with a foot injury. Veteran Mikhail Youzhny lost on one of his favorite surfaces to qualifier Jimmy Wang while Flavia Pennetta fell to American Lauren Davis.
Blood and Guts
Well… just blood really. Radek Stepanek left it all on court against Novak Djokovic, even suffering a small cut on his right knee. In the end, Djokovic beat out his sometimes practice partner, but it took four sets—two of them went to tiebreaks.
First Round by the Numbers
With the final few first round matches wrapped up today, here's a look at some of the interesting stats that have been generated. Of the 128 total men's and women's singles matches completed, 52 of them required additional sets. In total there were 379 sets played, 3,708 games completed and 23,530 points.
Doubles
Doubles play got underway yesterday. On the women's side, Martina Hingis made her first main draw appearance at Wimbledon since 2007 partnering Vera Zvonareva. They lost to the 4th seeded team of Cara Black and Sania Mirza. The 8th seeded Williams sisters were also in action, winning their match in three sets. At one point during the match, Serena slipped while hitting a wide forehand and ended up in the lap of a surprised fan.
Back-to-Back-to-Back-to-Back
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and his opponent Sam Querrey will both be forced to play four days in a row after their second round match was suspended at 9-9 in the fifth set. Tsonga's first round match against Jurgen Melzer started Monday and was suspended due to darkness. Play resumed on Tuesday and Tsonga finished Melzer off quickly. Querrey also started Monday against his countryman Bradley Klahn and was forced to finish Tuesday. The match will resume with Querrey serving after the completion of the Gasquet/Kyrgios match.
Fognini Fined
A $27,500 fine was handed out yesterday to Fabio Fognini for his first round antics. During his four set win over Alex Kuznetsov, Fognini berated the umpire and swore on court. According to the ITF and Ben Rothenberg, Fognini's fine was the largest on-site fine in Slam history.
Best Tweet
I'm a big Game of Thrones fan and of course a big Wimbledon fan, so when I saw this tweet about Andy Murray's match featured on the Wimbledon Live Blog, I couldn't resist:
More mercy shown in an episode of Game of Thrones than by Murray today.
— Irvine Welsh (@WelshIrvine) June 25, 2014
Speaking of Andy Murray
After his 84 minute win over Blaz Rola, Murray was… uhm… "interviewed" by Hacker the Dog from the British children's show Hacker Time. It's good for a few chuckles:
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