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Wishes come true at Wimbledon

© Michael Cecilio

The complexion of the second week draw
After one spectacular week of Wimbledon tennis, we have gone through three rounds and eliminated 112 out of the original 128 players in the draw. It now starts to get interesting. The draw from the fourth round is now as follows:

Jelena DOKIC (AUS) vs 9-Mary PIERCE (FRA)
Alexandra STEVENSON (USA) vs Lisa RAYMOND (USA)
3-Lindsay DAVENPORT (USA) vs 14-Barbara SCHETT (AUT)
Nathalie DECHY (FRA) vs 5-Jana NOVOTNA
8-Nathalie TAUZIAT (FRA) vs 15-Dominique VAN ROOST (BEL)
Tamarine TANASUGARN (THA) vs Mirjana LUCIC (CRO)
6-Venus WILLIAMS (USA) vs 17-Anna KOURNIKOVA (RUS)
Kim CLIJSTERS (BEL) vs 2-Steffi GRAF (GER)

Of the 16 seeds in the original draw, only 9 remain in the fourth round, which is surprisingly one less than in the men's draw. Judging from this stat alone, the WTA should have no problem in justifying an increase in depth throughout the tour. Of the sixteen players, six are teenagers (Dokic and Clijsters at 16; Lucic at 17; Kournikova and Stevenson at 18; Williams at 19) and three are thirty or over (Graf and Novotna at 30; Tauziat at 31). Only four have won a Grand Slam singles title before (Davenport, Novotna and Pierce with 1 title; Graf with 22 titles) and eight have never advanced further than the fourth round of a Grand Slam (Dokic, Stevenson, Raymond, Schett, Dechy, Tanasugarn, Lucic and Clijsters). So Wimbledon 1999 has delivered one of the most dynamic Grand Slam draws in recent history, with an even mixture of youth and age, and experience and inexperience. Most importantly, we can be guaranteed of watching a number of terrific matches as the tournament progresses.

Missing in action
Looking at how the second week has panned out, we notice a number of glaring omissions. Where is Martina Hingis? Where is Monica Seles? Where is Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario? They are surprisingly nowhere to be seen in the second week of the singles draw, and have suffered at the hands of less experienced upstarts.

STOP PRESS!!!! World #1 Martina Hingis crushed in the first round of Wimbledon!!!
Never in a million years would anyone have dreamed of what was to become Martina Hingis's fate at Wimbledon 1999. In an absolutely humiliating affair, top seed and world #1 Martina Hingis was ousted from the prestigious major in the first round by one of the most talented up-and-comers of the WTA tour - Jelena Dokic of Australia.

As we watched Martina stare into space during changeovers, looking perplexed and panic stricken, we could not help but find remnants of that devastating French Open final loss still lurking in the forefront of Hingis's psyche. Not only was Martina Hingis defeated in the first round of a Grand Slam event, but she was absolutely torn to shreds by the Serbian born 131st ranked qualifier from Sydney, Australia (my home town!) 6-2 6-0. Based on this performance, a casual observer of tennis would have been forgiven for believing Dokic was the experienced campaigner while Hingis was the rookie in her first season. Dokic not only won the power game, but she also won the mental battle. She ran Hingis from corner to corner, consistently overpowered her with aggressive groundstrokes, forced a lot of errors to come off Hingis's racquet, and even played Hingis in her own game of deft drop shots. Mentally, Dokic was unflappable as she never let Hingis back into the match, frequently converted on most of her opportunities and never showed signs of tightness in closing out the rout.

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