I had a fantastic time at Wimbledon on Monday and have my report and photos coming later tonight.  I’ll be blogging manically for the next two weeks and this is the first of many previews coming your way.  I really hope you’ll continue to follow Moo’s Tennis Blog for the rest of the Championships 😀 Wednesday’s matches aren’t the greatest, but I am sure there will be a hidden gem or two in the line-up.

TFF DreamTeam Update:  After day 1, VITC led with Roger Williams in 2nd place and Grand Slammers in 3rd.

Official Wimbledon Fantasy Game Update: Thanks to all those who joined the league, we had 31 enter! After the first day of action, Froudy was leading the way.

Poll Results: 95% correctly went for Dimitrov to beat Harrison, 37% correctly went for Baghdatis to beat Brown, 39% correctly went for Matosevic to beat Verdasco, 21% correctly went for Wickmayer to beat Stosur and 36% correctly went for Vandeweghe to beat Muguruza.

1. Tomas Berdych v Bernard Tomic

The match of the day on the mens side will see the number six seed, Tomas Berdych face a significant test against high-achiever-at-Wimbledon, Bernard Tomic.  Berdych dropped his opening set of the tournament to Victor Hanescu, but recovered well to progress in four sets, 6-7(5) 6-1 6-4 6-3.  After a number of slips and missed break point opportunities in the opening set, Berdych turned the screw in the second set, dominating play with his forehand and dealing patiently and effectively with Hanescu’s deft slice.  Tomic has been relatively quiet in the media of late, by his standards.  He has done reasonably well in this grass court season (compared to the rest of his year) with one win at Queens and Eastbourne.  In the first round, Tomic had a good draw going up against Evgeny Donskoy and took advantage of it, progressing in straight sets,  6-4 6-3 6-2.

This is Tomic’s best surface and he has reached the quarter-finals back in 2011 and the fourth round in 2013 where he lost, coincidentally, to Berdych in four sets, 7-6(4) 6-7(5) 6-4 6-4.  Tomic’s slice works well on this surface and his serve also allows him some free points.  This will be on No.1 court and for Bernie’s sake, I hope that he puts on a solid display.  There is potential for an upset, but Berdych should be solid enough to navigate past another challenging opponent.

Prediction: Berdych d. Tomic in 4 sets

2. Novak Djokovic v Radek Stepanek

Novak Djokovic cruised through his first match of the tournament against Andrey Golubev.  I was out on court 7 watching Muguruza-Vandeweghe and one of the loudest ovations from Centre Court all day was when Golubev finally held serve to win his first game of the match.  Djokovic came through, 6-0 6-1 6-4 in 88 minutes.  Djokovic will face a much trickier match in the second round against Radek Stepanek.  The Czech player, who reached the semi-finals of Queens with a victory over Andy Murray in R3, beat Pablo Cuevas in straight sets in his first match.  Djokovic leads the head-to-head 10-1; the pair played at Wimbledon in 2012 where Stepanek won a set.  This surface is great for Radek’s game and he is likely to cause Novak some problems in this match.

Prediction: Djokovic d. Stepanek in 3 sets (at least one tiebreak)

3. Petra Kvitova v Mona Barthel

Normally there are bundles of womens matches I want to preview at this stage of a Grand Slam.  The matches in the bottom half of the womens draw are somewhat underwhelming for Wednesday.  Therefore, I picked out a match featuring two of my favourites, Petra Kvitova and Mona Barthel.  Members of the crowd for this one should probably take a hard hat as there are bound to be plenty of errors (along with winners too!).  Kvitova was sporting the strapping on her thigh again, but she enjoyed a very routine win over Andrea Hlavackova, 6-3 6-0.  Barthel reached the third round of the Australian Open and the French Open.  She secured her fifth Grand Slam win of the year up against Romina Oprandi.  Mona can hit winners from anywhere around the court and I could definitely see her winning a set.  If she did get into a winning position, I wouldn’t have the belief she could finish the job after some nervy matches in the last couple of weeks.  Petra for the win…

Prediction: Kvitova d. Barthel in 3 sets

WTA Wimbledon 2nd Round Predictions

Victoria Azarenka d. Bojana Jovanovski in 2 tight sets

Coco Vandeweghe d. Tereza Smitkova in 2 sets

Lucie Safarova d. Polona Hercog in 2 tight sets

Dominika Cibulkova d. Alison Van Utyvanck in 2 sets

Varvara Lepchenko d. Caroline Garcia in 2 tight sets

Ekaterina Makarova d. Misaki Doi in 2 sets

Jarmila Gajdosova d. Michelle Larcher de Brito in 3 sets

Agnieszka Radwanska d. Casey Dellacqua in 2 sets

Venus Williams d. Kurumi Nara in 2 sets

Maria Kirilenko d. Peng Shuai in 3 sets

Flavia Pennetta d. Lauren Davis in 3 sets

Caroline Wozniacki d. Naomi Broady in 2 sets

Ana Konjuh d. Yanina Wickmayer in 2 sets

Elena Vesnina d. Barbora Zahlavova Strycova in 3 sets

Li Na d. Yvonne Meusburger in 2 sets

ATP Wimbledon 2nd Round Predictions

Gilles Simon d. Robin Haase in 5 sets

Mikhail Youzhny d. Jimmy Wang in 5 sets

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga d. Sam Querrey in 4 tight sets

Ernests Gulbis d. Sergiy Stakhovsky in 4 sets

Jeremy Chardy d. Marinko Matosevic in 4 sets

Marin Cilic d. Andreas Haider-Maurer in 3 sets

Andy Murray d. Blaz Rola in 3 easy sets

Roberto Bautista Agut d. Jan Hernych in 3 sets

Kevin Anderson d. Edouard Roger-Vasselin in 4 sets

Fabio Fognini d. Tim Puetz in 4 sets *god knows*

Grigor Dimitrov d. Luke Saville in 3 sets (2 tight)

Alex Dolgopolov d Benny Becker in 5 sets

Marcos Baghdatis d. Leonardo Mayer in 3 sets

David Ferrer d. Andrey Kuznetsov in 3 sets