Federer breezes as play opens at Wimbledon

LONDON – Can it be two weeks short of a year since the world was gripped by a final here at Wimbledon, that some claim was the "greatest ever" played -- with Rafael Nadal depriving Roger Federer of a sixth straight title as he took the fifth set decider 9-7 in a rain-interrupted and light-starved finale.

Suddenly, everybody's back here for the 123rd Championships -- as though nothing happened!

I never thought that 12 months would be sufficient for the tournament organizers and the visiting public to recover from the bout. After all, nobody stopped the 'fight'. But here's everybody again, preparing to do battle.

Some 34 countries in the men's singles draw are fielding 128 contenders, with Spain, France and the United States leading the field with 14 competitors each. For the Ladies Singles, 37 nations are represented with Russia leading the way with 16 entries, followed by France with 11 and the Czech Republic with eight.

Being first day of the Championships, Wimbledon is accustomed to the fixation on two or three topics to get the tournament in motion. Last year it was the specter of match rigging and the price of strawberries.

This year it's the shock withdrawal by defending champion Nadal, female grunting on court, and of course the new centre court roof (more about the last two later).

The No. 1 seed and defending champion “Rafa” made his exit from Wimbledon on Friday before even hitting a ball. To a packed press conference here, he announced that his much-publicized knee injuries had not healed sufficiently for him to defend his title.

His withdrawal is a severe blow to the tournament. So today it fell to the runner-up, Federer, to kick off the opening match on Centre Court. This is the first time since 1973 that the runner-up has opened the tournament, after Ilie Nastase did so due to the withdrawal of 1972 champion Stan Smith.

After Robin Soderling defeated the Spaniard at Roland Garros last month (then getting all the way to the Final where his defeat handed Federer his much yearned for first French title and 14th Grand Slam title) it was a case of Rafa resting those knees and doing whatever he could to not jeopardize his fitness for Wimbledon. He pulled out of the pre-Wimbledon Queens Club Aegon grass court championships, which he won last year. Tentative practice in two exhibition matches last week (both of which he lost) prompted him to make his reluctant decision.

Serena Williams made the right observation after the announcement, when she said: "A lot of guys on the men's tour will be celebrating and partying."

Certainly Federer may have donned a party hat and ingested a tipple or two over the weekend. If you want to know why, just consider this for a moment -- all four of the Grand Slam finals he has lost, out of the 18 he has played, have been to Rafa. Another drink Roger . . .?

He's bidding for a sixth title here and at the moment he stands level pegging with Pete Sampras in holding 14 Grand Slam titles. So a win here would make him the first player to win 15 Slams.

We can only speculate that it's a question of “when” he achieves that, rather than “if.”

Today's match was against Yen-Hsun Lu from Chinese Taipei. The favorite for this year's tournament swept past the 64th ranked Lu but not before an impressive tightly contested set. In the fourth game of the opening set, Lu fought off four break points and followed this up by breaking the Federer serve for a 3-2 lead. With luck on his side, Federer then reached break point with a net cord that landed dead on his opponent's side of the net and the score leveled at 3-3. It seemed as though a tiebreak was looming but at 5-6 Lu faced a set point against him when he missed a volley. Then a backhand winner put Federer a set ahead. With resolve broken, the gritty player from Taipei succumbed eventually 7-5 6-3 6-2.

Andy Murray has moved up to No. 2 seed after Nadal's withdrawal and so is now seeded to meet Federer in the final. Murray comes to Wimbledon fresh from his first title at Queens Club where he defeated James Blake from the US in the Final.

What a difference a week makes. Blake was an early shock casualty in today's first round. Playing Andreas Seppi from Italy, the 17th seed American was always on the back foot and was hurtled out in three sets, 7-5 6-4 7-6, as he squandered an imposing five point lead in the third set tie-break.

"It doesn't happen very often that you lose from 5-0 to 7-5. I was playing pretty well at Queens. Thought I had a good chance to do well here." A fatigued Blake went on to criticize the ATP Tour schedule and said he believed the tour calendar was a major factor contributing to Nadal's unfortunate withdrawal.

“You need to be training, there's no real pre-season. We're at a slam three weeks into the year (at the Australian Open) so you can't warm up into a year. You don't have 20 or 30 games of pre-season like in baseball.”

Because the opening day's matches were diverted to the lower half of the draw due to Nadal's non-appearance, it was Serena Williams, like Federer, who got to try out the new roofed centre court, ahead of sister Venus who

was last year's champion in their all-sister final.

Two-time champion Serena was playing a qualifier, ranked 155, Neuza Silva, and she made short work of the encounter as she looked very much at home on centre court during her 6-1 7-5 win. She is in the opposite half of the draw from sister Venus, the defending and five-time champion.

Was she happy with her first round performance? "Not really. I'm insatiable. I always want more."

What about the other talk here? The end of an era with the arrival of a roof on Centre Court. Some of us were lucky enough to see the roof last month, when a married couple from Las Vegas -- Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf -- were sent over to play a couple of matches against another pair, to test the new. It helped that they were former Wimbledon champions of course; this was no ordinary married couple.

First-time visitors are seeing 6400 square yards of translucent fabric with trusses and hydraulic jacks. When it's closed, Centre Court suddenly becomes Carnegie Hall or Centre Court Cathedral. Visitors this year may even get by without seeing the multimillion-pound roof in action. The talk is of a rain-free fortnight.

The other talk, prompted by another Nick Bolletieri protege the 16-year-old Portuguese, Larcher de Brito, is all about grunting. She is said to possess the loudest grunt in tennis history. Just a few decibels short of a 747 aircraft is the official measurement.

At the French Open last month, her opponents complained to the umpire. Three of the loudest grunters in women's tennis, Monica Seles, Maria Sharapova and this lady, all hail from Bolletieri's Florida academy.

Speaking here, nine-time champion Martina Navratilova suggested that those players who scream, grunt and shriek are "cheating" by distracting their opponents. Bolletieri said that grunting was not on the curriculum at his academy and called Navratilova's comments "absolutely ridiculous."

Maria Sharapova, still regaining her best form following shoulder surgery, trailed 4-1 and 5-3 in the opening set against Viktoriya Kutuzova but took the set 7-5. Her Ukrainian opponent broke back immediately in the second set but Sharapova grunted her way to victory at 6-4 in the second set, obviously oblivious to Navratilova's comments.

James Borg, a freelance journalist and award-winning author, has covered the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships for three decades. He lived briefly in Las Vegas and worked at Caesars Palace. He lives in London.