Welcome to Wombledon Day Three

Chatting about British winners, Aryna Sabalenka in tiebreaks and the best Wimbledon kits

Some short thoughts and reflections on a couple of talking points that interested me on every day of Wimbledon.

Day three of Wimbledon saw our first rain delay of the tournament to kick start the day. It only delayed play by an hour or so which is nothing by Wimbledon standards, but there was something weirdly reassuring about it after two boiling hot days.

Wimbledon hasn’t really started until you see the image of the outside courts all covered and a handful of fans sat down hoping they don’t move the starting time back another 15 minutes.

In terms of the actual tennis, today has felt like a move to some sense of normality after an insane opening round. That said, we’ve still had quite a few seeds going out such as 12th seed Frances Tiafoe and 23rd seed and Queen’s runner-up Jiri Lehecka on the men’s side and world number four Jasmine Paolini in the women’s.

It’s still a lot of top players gone from the draw, but when yesterday, and to a lesser extent Monday, was such a bloodbath, this feels like small fry by comparison. I can cope with one Top 10 player out on a day, no more, thank you!

Great British Performances

We saw several Brits in action today with several really great wins including two wins on the show courts. Sonay Kartal opened Court Three with a fabulous 6-2, 6-2 win over Viktorya Tomova. Kartal looked as comfortable as possible out there, grinding Tomova down in long rallies time and again.

Kartal will play French qualifier Diane Parry whose main claim to fame in my mind has always been one of the few women on tour with a one-handed backhand.

In short, this is a brilliant opportunity for Kartal to make the second week of Wimbledon. Given she’s beaten a top player in Ostapenko and backed that up so well, I’m optimistic for her chances.

Opening Court One we had a relatively comfortable win for Cam Norrie over Frances Tiafoe, coming from a set down to win in four. To some extent this is the case of a player without grass form or pedigree losing to a player without that grass experience.

Norrie is a former finalist at Queen’s and a Wimbledon semifinalist, Tiafoe meanwhile opened his Queen’s campaign this year losing out in straight sets to Dan Evans. Tiafoe in fact has never beaten a Brit on grass, so Norrie’s win was in many ways a foregone conclusion.

To be frank, this was Norrie outplaying Tiafoe pretty comfortably for much of the match. After the first set Tiafoe barely made inroads on the Norrie serve- aside from a key game where Norrie won from 0-40 down in the second set- and was frequently defending break points in his own service games.

Norrie has had a rough couple of years off a massive downturn in form in 2023 and injury issues in 2024, so seeing him back with big wins at Wimbledon is a definite feel-good story. This is a well-earned victory and run.

The biggest win of the day, however, was the last match on Centre Court with Emma Raducanu beating 2023 champion Marketa Vondrousova in straight sets.

Many, me included, had been earmarking Vondrousova for a Round Three matchup with Aryna Sabalenka with a chance to cause an upset over the world number one.

It has to be said that Vondrousova’s level was far below what I expected out there today. While there was occasional great court craft and winners, she broadly let Raducanu dictate and play the type of match the Brit wanted to play.

Having said that…my word, the tennis Raducanu brought was impressive. She’s such a natural on a grass court, combining great movement, clean hitting and great pieces of variety with backhand slices and drop-shot-into-passing-shot combos.

Many might be quick to brand this the best she’s played since the 2021 US Open run, but I think that’s unfair. Raducanu has had several good runs and really impressive wins this year such as making the quarterfinals of Miami taking out 8th seed Emma Navarro, 17th seed Amanda Anisimova and taking eventual finalist Jessica Pegula to three sets.

There’s been good tennis in there for Raducanu, she’s stabilised her ranking and is improving her fitness. The main thing holding her back in recent times has been, well, her back. Injury issues in the grass season in particular have made her progress very stop-start.

Good, comfortable wins at Wimbledon for Emma Raducanu are no longer a novelty or harking back to what she was four years ago. This is just who she is now, she is a constant presence in British tennis and that’s heartwarming.

At the same time, of course, we did see a few disappointing British losses. The one that stands out the most was Katie Boulter losing from a set up against Argentine lucky loser Solana Sierra. Boulter won just three games across the two sets she lost.

It’s bitterly disappointing loss for Boulter as she misses out on a huge opportunity to potentially make the second week of Wimbledon. The blunt truth is that this is classic Katie Boulter. She’s never gone beyond Round Three at Wimbledon and never beyond Round Two at any other slam.

Those two Round Three losses came in 2022, a dud of a performance to Harmony Tan, and 2023 where she was taken apart by defending champion Elena Rybakina. Some players just do not rise to the occasion in slams.

In many ways that feels quite distinctly British, a player not taking their chance to make a run at Wimbledon. Spiritually, we are a nation of sporting underperformance, even if we’ve broken those shackles in most other big sports.

It’s that vibe, then, that makes the good wins for Brits today so noteworthy; for once we saw some of those players actually take their chances and do it without much fuss!

Aryna Sabalenka vs Emma Raducanu (and tiebreaks)

That superb Raducanu performance replaces that exciting Vondrousova-Sabalenka matchup with an equally intriguing encounter with the world number one.

The two have only played once, last year at Indian Wells in what ended up a closer than expected straight sets win for the Belarussian (6-3, 7-5). I think we’ll see a similar scoreline for Sabalenka at worst.

I can’t imagine Sabalenka lets Raducanu dictate and dominate in the way she did today. The power and aggression are going to be completely different to what Raducanu faced against Vondrousova. Sabalenka has made a career of hitting everyone off the court, I don’t see that changing too much.

But at the same time…I wonder how interesting things can become. Sabalenka wasn’t at her best today; she only generated her first break point of the match against Marie Bouzkova in the last game of the opening set down 5-6. It was hardly the cleanest of wins for her, especially considering that she’s usually been pretty good at being clinical in early rounds of slams.

Now, none of that’s to say that this was anything other than “routine” for her, but it makes me wonder whether Raducanu might be able to push her in some way. I’m predicting Sabalenka in straight sets, but those might not be easy sets.

They might require Sabalenka to win on a tiebreak, something she’s become extremely good at doing in 2025. Sabalenka now has a mighty impressive winning record in tiebreaks this year with 14 wins and just the one loss in the final set of her opening match in Doha to Ekaterina Alexandrova.

Sabalenka has now won 12 breakers in a row which is a crazy streak, but I wanted to take a little look under the hood of that stat to understand why Sabalenka has become so good in tiebreaks.

The first thing that stands out is that Sabalenka is playing more tiebreaks than normal. In 2024, Sabalenka had an 8-5 win-loss record in tiebreaks. Sabalenka has won more tiebreaks this year (14) than she played in the entirety of last year (13). And that’s with almost 20 fewer matches played this year!

Digging into the sets that Sabalenka has won on a tiebreak, it does seem like it’s a case where she’s winning tiebreaks when she should have closed the set out far earlier.

As a few recent examples, Sabalenka served for the match against Elena Rybakina in Berlin at 5-4, got broken and had to win the tiebreak saving four match points. She had a 4-1 double break lead against Coco Gauff in the opening set of the Roland Garros final and served for the set twice.

She also had a 4-1 double break lead against Iga Swiatek in the semifinals in Paris and, you guessed it, served for the set before getting broken. Repeatedly, Sabalenka shouldn’t really be needing a tiebreak to close these sets out.

Now, there is still a positive spin on that fact, which is that Sabalenka keeps responding positively to the disappointment of surrendering leads. You would certainly prefer that record than, say, Iga Swiatek’s 4-6 tiebreak record in 2025, several of those tiebreaks being extremely one sided.

Being able to fall back on that tiebreak record and confidence is a great positive for Sabalenka, but it does suggest a vulnerability in seeing out a lead that might well get punished more in future. Or not, if that tiebreak record stays as strong as it has!

Best Dressed

I’ll leave you with a shoutout the by far the best kit of Wimbledon this year which is the fabulous Adidas outfit being worn by Sonay Kartal.

Look at this. It’s beautiful. We’ve got classy green highlights to fit the grass theme and some really nice, unique texturing on the shirt to add some variety. The oversized style feels like a great throwback to the 90s and early 2000s and looks particularly great on a slightly shorter player in Sonay. The collar on the top is a nice touch, too.

Wimbledon kits these days tend to be quite low effort. The all-white theme does limit your creativity to some extent. There’s only so many ways Nike could reinvent Roger Federer’s kit even in their more innovative years.

But even then, you can certainly do better than Carlos Alcaraz wearing an identical generic white t shirt and shorts for three years running. Considering Nike did manage to put out quite a fun collection for the French Open with a rugby themed polo shirts set, it feels particularly boring.

I’ll also give an honourable mention to Coco Gauff’s dress, even if we only got to see it the once this fortnight.

This is what you can do with Wimbledon kits. Unique style, unique texture, fitting the more regal and elegant theming of the Championships. A better world is possible!!