Wimbledon 2013: Confessions of a tennis fan - A day of massive tremors

Meanwhile, French Open semifinalist Jo Wilfred Tsonga started well but after losing the 3rd set against Ernest Gulbis, he also walked off with a knee injury. Now this would open up the draw for Murray. Surely the courts at SW19 are not up to the mark. This reminded me of the Madrid Masters on blue clay last year with the seeds tumbling and not being able to cope with the surface. But there was still hope as Murray had eased to the third round on court 1 and a Federer-Murray semifinal was still on the cards.

As the day passed and the shadows lengthened at Wimbledon, some good news came with all the Indians going through to the next round. Another topsy-turvy encounter played out at court 3 with Australian Open semifinalist Sloane Stephens winning in the final set 8-6 against Petkovic.

Now came the time for the final match of the day, watching the ‘King of grass’ on such a day full of upsets would be a soother for sure. But what Federer faced against Sergiy Stakhovsky was beyond my comprehension. Both players held their serve in the first set and Federer won it though in the tie-break. I thought the Ukranian would now lose his momentum and Federer would prevail. Alas, the match maintained the same pace, again going to a tie-break. This time though, it wasn’t Federer who was on the winning side. When the closely fought third set went away from Federer, memories of Falla a few years back came through the mind and with it the belief that Roger can pull it through.

Roger Federer

Even in the fourth set tie-break, when one match point was saved, it felt as though the master had one more bout left in him. Unfortunately, this was not to be, as the gritty Ukranian’s serve and volley game coupled with Federer’s errors resulted in undoubtedly one of the biggest upsets in the history of tennis in a really, really long time.

By the end of the day, I had lost count of the number of upsets and injuries that had taken place. What I witnessed yesterday may be Andy Murray‘s sweetest dreams but the impact that this day of tennis had can surely be described as an earthquake in tennis’s history. Or maybe this could be the handing over of the baton to a new brigade of Gulbis and Stakhovskys, the next generation of tennis stars.