The Championships - Day Nine Diary

© Getty ImagesA Roger Federer fan.

ATPWorldTour.com takes a look at the news and talking points at The Championships on the second Tuesday.

What The Papers Are Saying

Roger Federer addressed the reasons why players approach the net less, after it was noted that the baseline were bare of grass on the second day of The Championships. The Swiss said: "Have we become such incredible return players or can we not volley any more – or is it just a combination of slower balls, slower courts? It's definitely a bit of a combination. If I look back, we definitely had many more great volley players in the game back then. Because we don't have that as much, everybody's content at the baseline."

When asked by The Guardian newspaper, an All England Club spokesman said: "Does serve-and-volley really exist anymore on the circuit? There has been no change in the preparation of the court or its set-up. It's been pretty hot and the top gets baked so the ball can bounce a bit higher. There's also been no change in the compression of the ball since 1995, when there was a 2% change. It may be a perception thing. Atmosphere can be a factor, modern racket technology can affect the ball, there are many factors that make getting into the net more difficult. So it is nothing to do with court condition."

Queuing for tickets outside the All England Club is a long-standing tradition. On Monday, the queue experienced a landmark event with the handing out of the 1,000,000th "queue card" since they were introduced in 2003. The queue cards are the definitive way to prove your place, and the 1,000,000th went to South African Rose Stanley, visiting Wimbledon for the first time, who received a free programme and an invitation to tea with the head steward.

Writing in The Times on six-time champion Federer, Julian Muscat comments “Roger Federer was expected to declare his hand at the start of the second week. Instead he made a declaration of war. In crushing his good friend, Jürgen Melzer, he served warning that any imposters would find Centre Court hostile territory. Were there doubters? Did anyone really believe that Federer’s first-week wobbles were portents of a greater malaise? There can be no longer. This was a masterclass from the Swiss precisionist, a 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 victory that marked the passage from that-was-then to this-is-now.”

Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph chronicles the exit of a three-time runner-up, “Andy Roddick finally beat his dejected retreat off Court No 2 at 8pm on Monday night but one sensed he would have played through darkness to keep his ambition of a fourth Wimbledon final in sight. Instead he was vanquished, wearing the look of one who wondered whether, at 28, he would ever win this tournament.” Roddick lost to Yen-Hsun Lu in five sets.

The New York Times writer, Greg Bishop, states, “Tennis fans here love their underdogs, and in Roddick, they found another Goran Ivanisevic, also a three-time runner-up at Wimbledon. All tournament, but especially on Monday, the fans embraced Roddick, implored him, shouted his name between each point in the fifth set. As it ended, shadows crept across the far edge, a symbolic closing of the curtain on the Americans in men’s singles here.”

Looking Ahead To The Quarter-finals

On Wednesday, Rafael Nadal will meet Robin Soderling at The Championships for the first time since 2007 in a repeat of this month’s Roland Garros final.

Nadal insists: “I think the match is completely different (to the Roland Garros final) because it's on grass than on clay. His game is good on every surface but it is probably even more difficult to stop him here, because the ball goes faster and it is going to be very difficult to return and difficult to stop him from the baseline. I think he's playing with big confidence and a big serve. So he's playing great. It is going to be a very difficult match for me I think. But hopefully for him, too."

Soderling, attempting to become the first Swede to reach the Wimbledon final since Stefan Edberg picked up his second title in 1990, said: "It's going to be an extremely tough match. He's World No. 1. We played a lot of times and had a lot of tough matches. But I think it's definitely easier to play him on any other surface than clay."

Murray Mania

Under the headline, ‘Andy Murray's victory raises the spectre of Fred Perry again’, Mark Reason writes in an article for The Daily Telegraph, “Fred Perry. Well, someone had to say the name. Here we are in the second week of Wimbledon and Andy Murray is the only man left in the draw who has not dropped a set. Murray is in the form to bring back memories of 1936 and all that.”

Does Murray feel he is back to playing his best tennis? "I'm playing really well, but you have to wait until the end of the tournament to see how well you've actually been playing,” said the fourth seed. “I need to make sure that I up my game when the matches get tougher and in the tight situations. It's important that I continue to play well and don't slip up." He will meet Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.

Headline Of The Day

‘Sun, sweet dreams and a little sporting salvation on Henman Hill’

Brian Viner, a sports feature writer and interviewer for The Independent, describes the experience of spending time on Aorangi Terrace, better known as Henman Hill. “In fierce late-afternoon sunshine on Henman Hill yesterday there were more red necks than in a Baton Rouge trailer park, but blue was also the colour, one or two saltires being waved enthusiastically as Andy Murray continued his seemingly inexorable progress towards another Grand Slam quarter-final. Strangely, although Henman Hill remains largely as genteel as the solicitor's son from whom it takes its name, there are pockets of raucousness more redolent of the New Den, Millwall, than the All England Club, SW19.”