WIMBLEDON 2007: Mid-Tournament Report

Well, since there's no tennis being played at Wimbledon today for obscure reasons, I thought I'd give you and update on the tournament so far. The picture above was posted on wtaworld.com, a fan web messageboard, and sent to me by a fellow Venus Williams fan. Previously, Mad Professah had blogged about Venus going down to Texas to visit her golf pro boyfriend Hank Kuehne at a tournament and included a grainy black and white newspaper photo. Above is a better picture of Hank, wearing well-fitting jeans and looking comfortable holding hands with America's Most Popular Female Athlete (2004, 2006).

Anyway, back to tennis:
The stars are aligning for Roger Federer to win his 5th consecutive Wimbledon title. Today his 4th round opponent Tommy Haas withdrew and gave the World #1 a walkover to the 2007 Wimbledon quarterfinal. His arch nemesis has yet to play his 3rd round match, and to win the tournament will be required to play 5 matches in seven days. This basically means Nadal, who just turned 21 last month and is in phenomenal shape will have two rounds where he will have two play consecutive days. That won't be a problem, the problem will be who he is playing in those rounds (Robin Soderling, Mikhail Youzhny and Tomas Berdych) any of whom can beat him if they are having a good day. I predict Federer will win the final, and it will not be over Nadal.

On the Women's side, defending Champion Amelie Mauresmo is looking sharp, as is World #1 Justine Henin and the always dangerous Maria Sharapova. However, who can bet against a Williams sister at Wimbledon? At least one of them have appeared in six of the last seven Wimbledon Ladies' finals, with 5 titles between them. Serena (as usual) looks more focussed, and is on track for a titanic clash with Henin in the quarterfinals. Venus need to make up a 1-4 deficit in the second set (after winning the first set 6-3) against Akiko Morigami in order to set up a very interesting Round of 16 match with Sharapova.