Wimbledon 2013: Talking points from Day 4

Schedulers’ delight at rain

Strangely, a welcome sight for the schedulers

This might be the inner cynic in me, but I’m sure some of the schedulers were happy the final round of singles was cancelled. Black Wednesday might have been one of the most memorable days in Wimbledon’s history, but it meant a lot of big names needed to maintain fans’ interest for later on in the tournament had disappeared.

In the bottom half of the women’s draw, the only established names that semi-knowledgeable fans knew, were Petra Kvitova and Marion Bartoli. In the same half of the men’s draw, aside from Murray, the most recognisable name is arguably Fernando Verdasco and he isn’t even seeded. Trying to generate interest for people to come and watch the show courts that day would have been a lot trickier than normal. But thanks to the rain, the schedulers can parachute in some names from the top half.

In the women’s draw, who’s the better puller of fans than the new darling of British tennis, Laura Robson? It might seem a bit stupid to put a 19-year-old ranked 38 on Centre Court, but realistically she’s going to get a better reaction from the crowd than any other player left in that half of the draw.

David Ferrer has added a bit more muscle to the show courts as well but looking at matches like Nicolas Almagro vs Jerzy Janowicz on Centre and Victor Troicki vs Mikhail Youzhny on Number 1, you can understand the drawbacks of so many upsets happening too early in the tournament.