Day 7 preview
Saturday, 25 June 2011


At last we're back on track! After a day of more summery weather enabled a successful schedule catch-up on Saturday, Wimbledon's second Monday brings what is generally acknowledged as the tournament's best day for spectators - if not the single juiciest programme of tennis in the entire year - as the fourth round matches of both men's and women's singles are all contested on a single day.
That's 16 lovely matches - featuring 16 top men and 16 top women, all of them just four matches away from fulfilling a title dream.
Home interest, of course, is centred on the prospects of Andy Murray, being willed by a nation to push on through this second week towards his first major title.
Murray has come close in the past two years, falling at the semi-final stage, but in the match opening up proceedings on Centre Court, he will be heartened by the prospect of taking on Richard Gasquet.
Three years ago, in the same fourth round, Gasquet led by two sets and served for the match at 5-4 in the third, only to lose in five. So the prospects seem good for Murray, though he is making respectful noises ("He plays very well on grass, it's going to be tough," was his official pre-match line).
Gasquet calls that 2008 classic "a good memory, even if I lost", so Andy Murray will be hoping to provide the 17th-seeded Frenchman with another good memory. When they met again in the French Open last year Murray repeated the trick, losing the first two sets and winning in five.
Later in the day on Centre Court, the biggest beast of the Big Four, Rafael Nadal, faces a demanding task in order to book his spot in the quarter-final. He is up against Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, who is making his way back towards the sort of awesome form which won him the US Open in 2009.
Since that heady moment, Del Potro has endured a rough time, managing only three tournaments last year because of a wrist injury.
A respectful Nadal calls him "top five level when he's healthy" and much will depend not only on the Argentine's health but how far his form of 2009 has returned. Perhaps Nadal is cautious because Del Potro has won three of their last four matches.
Roger Federer, still to concede a set, will fancy his chances of extending that perfect sequence since he is next up against the Russian, Mikhail Youzhny as the third match of the day on No.1 Court. So far in The Championships, Federer has dropped serve just once in three matches and has an 84% average of first points won. It is highly impressive stuff so far from our six-time champion.
In the last 16 of the women's singles the Williams sisters are still defiant in their attempt to continue their decade-long domination of this event.
Since Serena had not played between winning the title last summer and arriving at Eastbournetwo weeks ago, and Venus was out of action between January and June, the thinking among some foolhardy folk was that they were here on a sentimental journey, revisiting the scene of former triumphs. All those people can now be invited to think again. The sisters are here to win and are proceeding, sometimes shakily, but so far successfully.
Venus gets the shout for Centre Court billing but that may be down to what happened when she met her opponent Tsvetana Pironkova on the same arena in last year's quarter-final. The Bulgarian created one of the shocks of the year by knocking out the five-time champion, in some style. She has not attained the same giddy heights since but Venus, still feeling her way back to full fitness, has reason to be wary.
Serena's opponent on No.1 Court will be the best of the French girls, Marion Bartoli, whose CV boasts a Wimbledon runner-up spot to Venus in 2007. Bartoli has not enjoyed much good fortune against Serena either, having finished comfortably on the wrong end of two straight-set defeats. But it is four years since they met so it may not be wise to trust previous performance as a useful guide to eventual outcome.
So what was it we were saying again about Murray v Gasquet?