As I write, four unlikely players line up against the top 4 men at Wimbledon. Two have morning slots: Jean-Wilfried Tsonga and Bernard Tomic. Tsonga is playing the third-seeded Federer while Tomic, an unseeded eighteen year old Australian, faces second-seeded Novak Djokovic of Croatia.
Tsonga has just won the third set at 6-4 after Federer's earlier domination, 6-3, 7-6. Tsonga's forehand and serve have been parachuted down to Centre Court, just in time. He moves with fluidity and an easy bounce, his feet getting set just before striking the ball. In his native France he's likened to Mohammed Ali: the same focused face riding on solid shoulders. He and Federer split two games for 1-1 in the third. Tsonga has the lead at 40-30, break-point ... ah, he just broke serve for 2-1.
Tomic and Djokovic have scored in the opposite order, with the younger player winning the first sets. In the third, the balls Djokovic has been hitting have been floating langorously, leisurely over the net, matching the strokes Tomic had used from the start. He adjusted in veteran fashion and changed the nature of the match at the time
NBC has not chosen to update the Tomic match in a half-hour.
Later, Mardy Fish, a US veteran of 29 and a late bloomer, will take on Rafael Nadal, who is ranked #1 in the world and seeded first here. Fish awoke, he says, in the last several years to a new sense of maturity and began to play seriously. It has paid off; he's #10 in the world.
The last match of the day is a battle between Andy Murray and Feliciano Lopez of Spain. Murray carries the pressure of representing the hopes of Great Britain to capture the men's Wimbledon championship for the first time in seventy-five years. Fred Perry, a man whose name was an endorsement on polo shirts 50 years ago, was the last native man to win the tournament. The joke out of England is that he's called an Englishman when he wins and a Scot when he loses.
Tsonga won the third set, 6-4, and now is serving for the fourth step. NBC commentators had set up the match by speculating whether he would take a single set from Federer. The question now in play is whether -- Tsonga having just won his serve and the fourth set -- Federer will win the single set he must win to secure the win.
Still no word on Tomic. I suspect Djokovic must be sqashing him. Or NBC is maintaining sole focus on the match here.
The greatest thing about Wimbledon this year is that the top four men's players could reach the semifinals. Then again, four players (given that the momentary blackout of Tomic-Djokovic means nothing) that don't leap off the tongue, reach the semis, one of them getting their name on the clunky gold Edwardian jug.
Tsonga served perfectly in the opening game for 1-0, has just broken Federer for 2-0 and stands at 40-0 in the third game, second serve ... double-fault ... oops, out ... Federer breaks. Now this could go either way. Seriously, Federer just needs a scintilla of fire and whoosh!!
But not today, not so much. And Tomic, and why they haven't referred to him, Djokovic did squash him. All pretty prophesies in shreds.
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