Wimbledon Capsules: 2008 champ Rafael Nadal wins in Wimbledon return
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Trying to switch directions while chasing a shot beneath the Royal Box at Wimbledon’s Centre Court, Rafael Nadal lost his footing and took a nasty-looking spill, flinging his racket in the air while he fell.
The Spaniard was OK, even if he did land on his back behind the baseline and glanced overhead to make sure his equipment wasn’t going to nail him in the noggin. Nadal toweled off and, four games later, wrapped up a 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Japan’s Kei Nishikori in the first round at the All England Club.
It was merely a coincidence, of course, that Nadal’s third-set tumble Tuesday left him in nearly the same position, and in the same spot, that he found himself the last time he played a match at Wimbledon, almost two full years ago. Except on that occasion, he was dropping to the grass on purpose to celebrate beating Roger Federer in the 2008 final.
Nadal didn’t defend that championship, withdrawing last year because of painful tendinitis in his knees. Now he’s healthy, reinstated at No. 1 in the rankings, once again the reigning French Open champion — and back on what he called “probably the most beautiful and emblematic court in the world.”
Said Nadal: “I’m happy to be here again.”
He’s also happy to be able to scamper around a court as only he can, knowing that his knees won’t let him down.
Another past Wimbledon winner coming off an injury, Maria Sharapova, also played Tuesday, and also won convincingly, eliminating 127th-ranked Anastasia Pivovarova of Russia 6-1, 6-0 in only 54 minutes.
Sharapova had right shoulder surgery in October 2008 and was sidelined for about 10 months, then was hampered by a right elbow injury this season. She’s had to toy with her service motion, in addition to confronting worries about when she would regain the strokes that helped her win Wimbledon at age 17 in 2004, then two other Grand Slam titles.
“You never know until things happen. I mean, I believed that I would be back. Did I really know? I assumed, and I had a lot of belief in myself, and I had a tremendous amount of support from the people around me,” said Sharapova, who won 30 of 37 points on her serve Tuesday. “But you never really know till it happens.”
And these days, is her best tennis enough to beat anyone?
“Absolutely,” Sharapova said.
Joining her in the second round were defending champion Serena Williams, who pounded 15 aces in a 6-0, 6-4 victory over 17-year-old Michelle Larcher de Brito of Portugal to improve to 43-0 in first-round Grand Slam matches; two-time major champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, who overcame 16 aces by Akgul Amanmuradova of Uzbekistan and won 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-4; and No. 3 Caroline Wozniacki, No. 7 Agnieszka Radwanska, No. 9 Li Na and No. 10 Flavia Pennetta.
But No. 6 Samantha Stosur, the runner-up at the French Open a little more than two weeks ago, lost to 80th-ranked qualifier Kaia Kanepi of Estonia 6-4, 6-4. The woman who beat Stosur at Roland Garros, first-time major champion Francesca Schiavone, bowed out of Wimbledon on Monday.
The only other seeded woman who lost Tuesday was No. 25 Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic.
Four seeded men exited, and three are from Spain: No. 8 Fernando Verdasco, No. 19 Nicolas Almagro, and No. 14 Juan Carlos Ferrero, the 2003 French Open champion. The other was No. 24 Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus, the 2006 Australian Open runner-up.
Winners included No. 4 Andy Murray, two-time French Open finalist Robin Soderling, No. 9 David Ferrer, No. 10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and No. 18 Sam Querrey of Santa Monica, Calif. Murray is the only British man or woman still left, making this the first time in tournament history that the hosts have but one representative in the second round.
“It’s not great, is it?” Murray said.
For all of Nadal’s success at the French Open — he is 38-1 there, with five championships in six years — he considers his Wimbledon trophy his most significant accomplishment. Having to pull out of the grass-court Grand Slam tournament in 2009 was part of a tough season that also included his only loss at Roland Garros and, away from the court, his parents’ separation.
“We had many problems last year, with the knees and many things. After Roland Garros, it was a difficult decision not playing here,” said Toni Nadal, Rafael’s uncle and coach. “When you are the (defending) champion, you want to at least come here to play. But that’s life.”
Nadal is seeded second behind six-time Wimbledon champion Federer, who struggled in his first match Monday, coming back to win after dropping the opening two sets. Nadal faced no such dangers against the 189th-ranked Nishikori, who was honored as the 2008 ATP newcomer of the year after becoming the first Japanese man since 1937 to reach the U.S. Open’s fourth round, but then missed time with a right elbow injury.
“If I hit one easy shot, he’s going to hit winners. So it wasn’t easy for me,” Nishikori said. “I think he was playing really well today.”
If Nishikori is still trying to re-establish himself, Nadal clearly has recovered from his knee issues, going 22-0 on clay this spring.
Now his indefatigable style is once again on display at Wimbledon.
“This year, I worked a lot to be here,” Nadal said. “I’m perfect. Concentrated. Very motivated.”
Murray carries British hopes at Wimbledon
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Once again, Britain's hopes at Wimbledon rest with Andy Murray.
He was the only Briton left in the tournament Tuesday after the seven other men and women from the host country lost in the first round. Never before had fewer than two British players reached the second round in singles action at the All England Club.
"It's not a great start," said Murray, who reached the Wimbledon semifinals last year. "If you get a look at the rankings and the actual facts of, you know, where the players are and how they're doing in the bigger tournaments, the big junior tournaments, the results haven't been great."
The early losses by others mean Murray must shoulder the expectations of British fans who yearn for a winner at Wimbledon, the most genteel and tradition-bound of the four Grand Slam tournaments. The Scot has advanced deeper into the tournament each time he has played in it since reaching the third round in 2005, building a sense of anticipation.
Tim Henman, who retired in 2007, carried that burden for years, coming close with four semifinal and four quarterfinal appearances at the All England Club that only deepened the anguish of a public on the cusp of triumph.
"We're rather used to British men bottling out," said Wimbledon spectator Jenny Staples, using a British term for not doing something because of a lack of courage. "We're always so hopeful that we can finally get a British man who can be a Federer or Nadal, and it's not going to happen. Even if we haven't got the best players, we've got the best tournament."
The last British man to win Wimbledon was Fred Perry in 1936. The last British woman was Virginia Wade in 1977, and ever since, the British public and media have engaged in an annual bout of hand-wringing over why they can't produce another champion.
"You know, there's so much pressure on all of us here. All of us, there's nothing more we'd love to do than play good tennis and win here," Briton Anne Keothavong said Tuesday after losing in three sets to Anastasia Rodionova of Australia. "It just didn't happen. It's unfortunate. But, you know, life goes on. Nobody's died."
Wimbledon titles came easy to Martina Navratilova (she has 20, including nine singles crowns), who waded into the debate this week about what is wrong with British tennis.
"It may be just the question of weather. You just don't have enough courts. You saw Andy Murray there, he's practicing indoors because it's raining. And now so much of the tennis is outside," Navratilova said in a BBC interview.
However, she cited deeper concerns about the mentality of British players who are "happy just to sort of be part of it rather than wanting to win," as well as a lot of coaching that is far beneath the standards of tennis academies in France, Spain or the United States.
"For girls, they're just hitting forehands and backhands. They don't know how to serve, they don't really learn how to construct the point, and then they come on the tour, and it's, 'Uh oh, welcome to the big leagues,' and they can't quite handle it," she said.
All six Britons in the women's draw lost in the first round. They included the country's top player, Ukraine-born Elena Baltacha, and Australia-born Laura Robson, a 16-year-old who won the Wimbledon juniors in 2008. Besides Murray, the only other British man in the draw, Jamie Baker, entered on a wild card and lost to Andreas Beck of Germany.
Murray had a comfortable, three-set win on Tuesday against Jan Hajek of the Czech Republic. There was an added sense of urgency in the crowd, with frequent shouts of "Come on, Andy!" coming from the stands on Court 1.
Murray has said he won't play in Britain's Davis Cup relegation playoff against Turkey next month. A loss to Turkey would send Britain into the competition's bottom tier for the first time in the country's history. Britain lost in March to Lithuania in Europe/Africa Zone Group II, a result that ended the captaincy of John Lloyd, a former player who also suffered under national expectations at Wimbledon.
John McEnroe, a three-time Wimbledon winner, said on Sky News that the pressure rises every year that Murray fails to win, and that it could intensify in coming days if Britain's struggling soccer team is eliminated from the World Cup in South Africa in its last group match on Wednesday.
"Let's say they don't make it to the next round, then (the public is) going to lay everything on him," McEnroe said. "He better hope that they get their act together and then keep winning for a while, and maybe that will spur him on."
-- Christopher Torchia
Wimbledon is a major test for dads who are playing
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Back home, when Brazilian tennis player Marcos Daniel leaves his house to practice, his 3-year-old son sometimes asks if he's taking another airplane. No, Daniel explains patiently, he's just stepping out for a drive. The mention of "car" reassures the toddler.
"He knows I'm going to come back for lunch," Daniel said after a five-set loss to Marsel Ilhan of Turkey in the first round of Wimbledon on Monday. His wife, son and 4-month-old baby girl weren't there to see it. These past days, he kept in touch with online video chats from his hotel room.
The rigors of the professional tour are hard enough on players — shuttling from tournament to tournament, from airports to hotels, traveling and training, winning and losing. For the minority who are fathers, there is the added strain of leaving children behind for matches in distant cities.
Seven men in this year's Wimbledon draw of 128 players are fathers. Four — No. 1-seeded Roger Federer, No. 15 Lleyton Hewitt, Michael Llodra of France and Taylor Dent of the United States — won in the first round. The remainder lost: Daniel, No. 17 Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia and No. 20 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland.
Three mothers also competed: No. 8 seed Kim Clijsters is through to the second round; Rossana de los Rios of Paraguay lost to Venus Williams; and Sybille Bammer of Austria also lost.
Federer, whose twin girls turn 1 on July 23, seems to have little trouble juggling the demands and distractions of fatherhood with tennis, though as Wimbledon's defending champion and the holder of 16 Grand Slam titles he is hardly the typical player.
The Swiss star has abundant resources at his disposal, traveling in a private jet and often bringing his family to tournaments. He won the Australian Open in January but has since faltered, by his standards, and barely survived a five-setter against Alejandro Falla of Colombia on Centre Court.
Asked what it was like to be a father at Wimbledon, Federer said:
"Good. I can come back anytime. I'm a member. I can be a dad anytime at Wimbledon now. It's great being here with the kids and Mirka after last year's time where she was pregnant. It's nice to be back as a family."
Wawrinka, Federer's friend and doubles partner in winning the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics, became a father to daughter Alexia in February. He went down in five sets to Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin, who won in his Wimbledon debut.
"I try to travel a little bit with my family, but actually they are not here this time," Wawrinka said. "But that's fine. I'm pretty happy with my game."
Ljubicic said he was trying to develop the routine of having a bath every evening with Leonardo, who turns 2 in November. The boy recognizes tennis on television, and even knows a few of the players on the circuit. Ljubicic, who won his first Master Series title at Indian Wells this year, said life as a father was the same for professional athletes as it was for everyone else.
"It's definitely a different lifestyle, completely," he said. "Sometimes you have sleepless nights."
Llodra, who has a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son, said it was "tough to live, especially when they are at a good age to understand" and that his family joins him for part of the year during the hard-court season in the United States. January was tough, he said, because he has to spend several weeks away during tournaments leading to the Australian Open.
He said that if his wife was away from the computer during online chats with his children, he sometimes acts as the "police" and tells them to get to bed. His daughter will start school this year, making it harder for her to travel with her father.
Dent, an American with a serve-and-volley game, has a 5-month-old boy and his family is in Kansas City now with his mother-in-law. They planned to come to Wimbledon, but his son's sleep patterns have been irregular and his parents spared him the long trip. Dent looks forward to the U.S. summer circuit because it will be easier to spend time with his family on the road.
He doesn't think being a parent undermines his tennis.
"I'm too mature. I'm too hungry to want to win to let it negatively affect me," Dent said. "I'm going to do my training as always and I'm going to focus on my tennis as always. Hopefully it will be a nice complement to, you know, just the mental drain it is being out here."
Hewitt is the dean of tennis fathers. He and his wife, Bec, are expecting their third child in December.
Clijsters' feat of winning the U.S. Open as a mother is all the more extraordinary, and she coasted through her first round at Wimbledon. A nanny helps her when she travels with her 2-year-old daughter, Jada, and Clijsters usually prepares breakfast an hour before the girl wakes up.
"It's the weeks I go to tournaments that I know tennis is important, and that's when I really focus on tennis," Clijsters said.
In the end, results on the court can affect how well players handle parenthood and separation on the tour. Daniel, ranked 108th in the world, said it's especially tough on South American players in Europe, a long, expensive trip from home.
"It's getting difficult," he said. "Sometimes you just feel a little bit down after many years on the tour."
-- Christopher Torchia
Notebook: Blake faces questions after loss at Wimbledon
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Bothered by pain from a lingering right knee injury, James Blake is dealing with doubts about his tennis future.
Blake has been a top-five player, a Grand Slam quarterfinalist three times, a U.S. Davis Cup team regular — and on Tuesday he was thinking aloud about where things stand for his career after a 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 loss to 151st-ranked Robin Haase of the Netherlands in Wimbledon's first round.
"It's almost embarrassing to go out and play a Grand Slam match like that," said the 109th-ranked Blake, who had a testy exchange with ESPN reporter Pam Shriver between points, saying he thought her commentary was too loud and distracting.
He went 0 for 9 on break-point chances and made more than twice as many unforced errors as Haase, 23-10.
"The knee is not great," Blake said. "If it doesn't get better soon, I'm not sure how much longer I want to play in pain."
The 30-year-old Blake, who is based in Tampa, Fla., began having problems with his knee more than a year ago, but continued playing, refusing to use painkillers or anti-inflammatory medicine because he worries about their long-term effects.
"Just gradually got worse and worse until it got to a point where I just couldn't take playing at 80 percent. I can't beat these guys at 80 percent. I can't beat a lot of them at 100 percent on a given day. So to think that I'm going to compete with the top level of the game at 80 percent is just silly," he said. "Maybe it's just getting old, I don't know."
He took more than two months off the tour this season, not playing from March 26 — when he lost at Key Biscayne, Fla. — until last week, when he lost his opening match on grass at Eastbourne. The hope was that the rest would be enough.
"Maybe it says to me that I came back too soon," Blake said, "or maybe I'm just too far away (from) where I think I need to be."
The American earned a career-best ranking of No. 4 in late 2006, and also finished the 2008 season in the top 10.
He doesn't want to have knee surgery — "At this point in my career, I don't know if surgery is a viable option," he said — and will try to compete on the summer hard-court circuit, including the U.S. Open, before evaluating things.
"If my life is going to change after the Open," Blake said, "then I'll have to be anxious and see what comes next."
COMING UP ACES: Defending Wimbledon champion Serena Williams' serve is in good shape at the moment — she hit 15 aces and won all 27 points when she got a first serve in during her opening-round victory Tuesday.
It's her curtsy that she thinks needs work.
After wrapping up a 6-0, 6-4 win over 17-year-old Michelle Larcher de Brito of Portugal, Williams gave a curtsy toward the Royal Box, well aware that Queen Elizabeth II plans to visit Wimbledon for the first time since 1977 on Thursday.
Williams will be scheduled to play that day and has been working on her etiquette.
"I want it to be more natural," she said. "Right now it feels really forced. Seems like I've never done a curtsy before, which may be true. But I'm looking forward to nailing it."
There were no such issues with her play against Larcher de Brito, as Williams improved to 43-0 over her career in first-round matches at Grand Slam events. The No. 1-ranked American finished with a 47-6 advantage in winners and pounded serves at up to 119 mph.
"It's not even about the pace, because I could deal with that," Larcher de Brito said. "But she places it so well. When she aims for targets, she really hits that line or just clips that line."
Larcher de Brito hits the ball hard, too, and there were several lengthy baseline exchanges, accompanied by loud grunts from both players.
A year ago, Larcher de Brito's on-court shrieking drew attention and criticism, and she was quieter Tuesday.
Asked about her stroke-accompanying noise, she said: "Anything with my grunting, I don't want to answer. I don't want to go down the same road again."
FAST FAREWELLS: A tad more than two weeks ago, Samantha Stosur played in her first Grand Slam final, facing Francesca Schiavone for the French Open title. Neither woman lasted long at Wimbledon: Both lost in the first round.
French Open runner-up Stosur was seeded sixth at the All England Club, but she exited meekly Tuesday, beaten 6-4, 6-4 by 80th-ranked qualifier Kaia Kanepi of Estonia.
It was Stosur's fourth first-round exit in eight appearances at Wimbledon.
"I'm no doubt disappointed. Yeah, not really any other way to say it, really. I wanted to do a lot better here than what I had in previous years. I didn't," the Australian said. "So, yeah, it's unfortunate, but I'll come back next year and try even harder."
She entered the grass-court Grand Slam tournament with a tour-leading 35 match wins in 2010 and her career-best ranking, thanks in large part to what she did in Paris. Stosur knocked off current No. 1 Serena Williams and former No. 1s Justine Henin and Jelena Jankovic en route to the final, before losing to Schiavone.
There wasn't a lot of time to recover from that run on the red clay of Roland Garros.
"I'm not going to use that as an excuse. It's the same for everyone," Stosur said. "But it definitely is a quick turnaround."
Schiavone lost her Wimbledon opener on Monday.
"The champions of the game can do it back-to-back, and I guess that's the kind of pedestal that you want to try to look up to and try to get to yourself," Stosur said. "Neither of us had made it that far at the French and then had to turn it around in such a quick time frame. You know, that's the way it is. You have to deal with that, try and cope as best you can."
-- Howard Fendrich
Wimbledon Glance
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Tuesday at the All England Club:
Men’s Seeded Winners: No. 2 Rafael Nadal, No. 4 Andy Murray, No. 6 Robin Soderling, No. 9 David Ferrer, No. 10 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, No. 13 Mikhail Youzhny, No. 18 Sam Querrey, No. 25 Thomaz Bellucci, No. 26 Gilles Simon, No. 32 Julien Benneteau, No. 33 Philipp Petzschner.
Men’s Seeded Losers: No. 8 Fernando Verdasco, No. 14 Juan Carlos Ferrero, No. 19 Nicolas Almagro, No. 24 Marcos Baghdatis.
Women’s Seeded Winners: No. 1 Serena Williams, No. 3 Caroline Wozniacki, No. 7 Agnieszka Radwanska, No. 9 Li Na, No. 10 Flavia Pennetta, No. 14 Victoria Azarenka, No. 16 Maria Sharapova, No. 18 Aravane Rezai, No. 19 Svetlana Kuznetsova, No. 23 Zheng Jie, No. 29 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, No. 31 Alexandra Dulgheru, No. 32 Sara Errani.
Women’s Seeded Losers: No. 6 Samantha Stosur, No. 25 Lucie Safarova.
Noteworthy: Serena Williams won all 27 points when her first serve was good.
Quoteworthy: “I played very well. Well, maybe not that well.” — Michelle Larcher de Brito, who lost to Williams, 6-0, 6-4
Weather: Sunny. High of 80.
Online: www.wimbledon.org
