This post is part of the Summer of Tennis. If you don’t know what that means, you should start here:
This year I watched more of the first round of Wimbledon than I ever have before. It turned out to be fascinating.
In other sports, say like the NBA finals, you only watch the early rounds of a tournament to watch your team advance. Even in tournaments like the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, you watch to see if there will be a upset, but as soon as the dominant team takes control, and the game turns into a blowout, there is nothing to see.
Not so with tennis. I watched Federer “deconstruct” Lajovic and Nadal take down Sela. In both matches, you got to see how good those two are, their command of the court and the overwhelmingly powerful parts of their game, by watching them tear apart a lesser opponent.
The lesser opponents are great tennis players, so you also get to see them try to climb the mountain of playing against a top-ranked player. The underdog has to play with abandon. In the women’s bracket, №4 Stephens fell to №55 Vekic, which was interesting because Vekic controlled the match from the beginning and never lost her nerve.
Serena Williams lost her first set and then took control. It was fun to watch.
I watch a lot of boxing. It’s bad, I admit it. I should not watch, but I am a devoted fan of the “fights” (I’m glad there is no legal bull fighting in the country because I would probably watch that). A mismatch in boxing isn’t fun to watch, no matter what it tells you about the dominant fighter. You want to see the fighter tested.
But Wimbledon is a tournament. Everyone is going to get tested. Maybe those are the better matches, but the opening matches are good too.
Round 2 is on now. Kukushkin is trying to find a way to come to the net against Nadal. I don’t think he will be able to do it, but it is worth watching.
