2017 WIMBLEDON: Federer Wins Record 8th Wimbledon (19th Major!)

As I predicted, Roger Federer defeated Marin Cilic in the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles championship match. Federer  at age 35 won the match  6-3 6-1 6-4 to claim his 19th grand slam title and record-setting 8th Wimbledon title. Even more incredibly, Federer became the oldest Wimbledon champion in the modern era and the second man (after Bjorn Borg did it  1976) to win the title without dropping a set.

Federer has now won 2 majors in 2017 (2017 Australian Open and 2017 Wimbledon) and has an astonishing record of 31-2 for the year and added 5 ATP tour titles (Melbourne, Indian Wells, Miami, Halle, London)  to bring his career haul to 93 titles.
He is 9-0 against fellow Top 10 players and will rise to #3 in the ATP rankings on Monday. He is #2 in the year-long race to the year-end tour championships in London, a mere 500 points behind Rafael Nadal and has zero points to defend for the rest of the year, which means if he really wants it, he could very likely end the year at World #1. If he does so, he would become the oldest player to reach #1, eclipsing Andre Agassi who was 33 when he was #1, and he would tie Pete Sampras' record of six year-end #1's.

2017 WIMBLEDON: Tournament Update (R16 on Monday)

Wimbledon 2017 is humming along, and thanks to good weather there is again no play on the middle Sunday of the tournament, leading to what people call Manic Monday where all 32 players in the men's and single's draws compete on the same day (for the first and last time in the tournament). This is the fabled 4th round of Wimbledon, where a win gets you into the Quarterfinals. By form, the top 16 seeds should be the ones remaining but on the men's side the draw looks like:

• Murray(1)-Paire
• Querrey(24)-Anderson
• Nadal(4)-Muller(16)
• Roberto Bautista Agut(18)-Cilic(7)
• Raonic(6)-Zverev(10)
• Dimitrov(13)-Federer(3)
• Thiem(8)-Berdych(11)
• Mannarino-Djokovic(2)

This is pretty good, with 11 of the Top 16 seeds still in the tournament. On the women's side we have:

• Kerber(1)-Muguruza(14)
• Radwanska(9)-Kuznetsova(7)
• Rybarikova-Martic
• Vandewghe(24)-Wozniacki(5)
• Konjuh(27)-V. Williams(10)
• Ostapenko(13)-Svitolina(4)
• Konta(6)-Garcia(21)
• Azarenka-Halep(2)

which is basically the on par with the men's results, with 10 of the Top 16 reaching the Round of 14. The issue on the women's side is that there is only one player in the tournament who has won Wimbledon before, and it is Venus Williams who has won 5 of them. However, there are still several major champions remaining: Muguruza(1), Kuznetsova(2), Azarenka(2),Ostapenko(1) and Kerber(2).

The men's side has The Big four each of whom is a multi-Wimbledon champion and it is widely expected that one of he big 4 will this year's tournament just like they have every  year since 2003.

On Manic Monday, which matches get put on Centre Court is always a fascinating look into the priorities (and values) of the All-England club, and this year is no different. There is an unwritten rule that only one women's match is played on Centre Court each day. Here is the Order of Play for Monday July 10th:

• Ana Konjuh[27] (CRO)-V. Williams[10] (USA)
• Andy Murray[1] (GBR)- Benoit Paire (FRA)
• Grigor Dimitrov[13] (BUL)-Roger Federer[3] (SUI)

Enjoy!!

TENNIS TUESDAY: Federer, Lopez, Kvitova, Win On Grass; Djokovic-Agassi Duo Set For Wimby; McEnroe Puts Foot In Mouth (Again)

GRASS COURT SEASON CONTINUES WITH FEDERER, KVITOVA, LOPEZ WINNING TITLES
The 2017 grass court season (all 3 weeks of it!) continued into its 2nd week and ended with some people with strong grass court credentials doing quite well. 7-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer reached his 11th final at Halle and won his 9th title, defeating Sacha Zverev in two humiliating sets 6-1 6-3. A 2-time Wimbledon champion, Petra Kvitova, playing in only her second tournament after suffering a violent home invasion which led to her left hand being stabbed with a knife and a 6-month hiatus from tennis. Kvitova defeated Ash Barty in the finals of Birmingham 4-6 6-3, 6-2. However, the performance of the week was provided by 35-year-old Spanish hunk Feliciano Lopez, who saved match points in not one but two different contests on the way to  winning the Queen's Club tournament. The best was saved for last, with Lopez beating 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic 4-6, 7-6(2), 7-6(8) in dramatic fashion. 3 year ago, Lopez had lost the final to Grigor Dimitrov after holding a match point.

AGASSI TO RETURN TO COACH DJOKOVIC AGAIN, THIS TIME AT WIMBLEDON
And they said it wouldn't last. 8-time major champion Andre Agassi will return to the coaching box for the second consecutive major tournament to provide advice and support to Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon, it was announced this week. And this time Agassi will be able to be in attendance for all 7 matches, if the 3-time Wimbledon champion gets that far. (Djokovic lost in the 3rd round against Sam Querrey last year, signalling a sharp change of fortune for someone who at the time was the reigning champion of all 4 major tournaments.)

MCENROE ATTEMPTS TO SELL BOOKS BY DENIGRATING SERENA WILLIAMS
John Mcenroe has a new edition of his memoir coming out and is doing a media tour. Unfortunately, he was asked about Serena Williams by NPR and while he acknowledged that she is "no question" the "best female player ever" he also raised hackles by saying this: "Well because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world." Lots of Serena fans thought this was disrespectful, although Serena herself has said that men's tennis and women's tennis are completely different sports, she hit back at McEnrroe by saying "Dear John, I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based." I think htat's the equivalent of saying "Bless your heart" in the South!

SHOCK! Federer Loses Grass Comeback Match To Haas; Now 19-2 IN 2017

Roger Federer played his first match since winning the Miami Open in early April on grass in Stuttgart against his good friend, 39-year-old Tommy Haas. Since, Federer is 35, this was the oldest combined ages of two players on the WTA tour since 1982. For the second time this year, Federer had a match point but ended up losing to Haas 2-6, 7-6(8), 6-4.

After skipping the entire clay court season and seeing Rafael Nadal dominate it and win his 10th French Open, this could not have been the way that Federer hoped to begin the blink-and-you'll-miss-it grass court season this summer.

2017 FRENCH OPEN: Ostapenko Wins 1st Major By Out(b)lasting Halep

Jelena Ostapenko shocked the world  (and yours truly) by defeating Simona Halep to win her very first WTA Tour title at Roland Garros. Amazingly, she becomes the first player on either tour since Guga Kuerten did the same thing on June 10, 1997 which was the day Ostapenko was born! I was incorrect when I said that the 25-year-old Halep would be the mentally tougher player, because despite leading 6-4 3-0 and having three break opportunities for a 4-0 double break lead, the Romanian player threw her racquet to the ground when she squandered these chances, giving hope to her 20-year-old opponent. Ostapenko held serve and resumed going for broke on her groundstrokes and this time the balls hit the lines and Halep was soon on even terms in the second set and eventually down a break. Halep then decided to abandon her game plan of refusing to hit errors and started going for more, but instead she started to make more errors (and didn't really hit very many more winners). The end result was that Ostapenko won the 2nd set 6-4.

Halep did very to hold serve in the very first game of the 3rd set, despite facing two break points and used this momentum to go up 3-1 in the deciding set. But, similar to Roger Federer against Rafael Nadal in this year's Australian Open men's final, Ostapenko negated the score by holding her own serve and creating relentless pressure in her service return games and ended up winning the last 5 games to win the match 4-6 6-4 6-3. The pivotal point was at 3-all in the 3rd set with Halep serving and facing breakpoint when Ostapenko hit a backhand down the line that was going a foot wide but hit the net and bounced high and onto Halep's side of the net for a winner to earn the break. That was basically the coup de grace because then Ostapenko was able to hold serve to go up 5-3 and basically picked on Halep's weak serve return in the final game, ending with a down-the-line backhand service return winners on match point.

With the win Ostapenko will rise from #47 to #12 in the world. She is a former Junior Wimbledon champion and should be expected to have even better results on faster surfaces like grass and hard courts. Halep rises to #2 in the rankings and Angelique Kerber who lost on the very first day of play of Roland Garros 2017 will remain #1 the day after it.

GAME OF THRONES: Official #GOTS7 Trailer Released, Immediately Goes Viral

The first official full trailer for the upcoming penultimate season of Game of Thrones has been released and immediately set records for viewership of a tailer for a television show, garnering well over 60 million views in 24 hours.. (Previously a teaser trailer had been released.)

Season 7 of the hit show will premiere on July 16th and there will only be 7 episodes, instead of the usual 10 and Season 8, the final season, will consist of only 6 episodes.

WATCH: First Full Trailer for Christopher Nolan's Summer 2017 Dunkirk

The very first official full trailer for Christopher Nolan's next film, Dunkirk was released this week. This is the first film Nolan is making after 2014's Interstellar. Dunkirk  is about the famous World War II event, and stars Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy and 2016 Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winner Mark Rylance.