Welcome to Wombledon Day Four

Chatting FOMO, the value of replays, and who in the fuck is august holmgren

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

Today at Wimbledon saw yet more men’s seeds fall somehow. At times it has felt like they’re inventing new seeded players and new opponents to beat them. I felt this particularly when seeing that Tomas Machac of Czechia had lost to Danish qualifier August Holmgren.

Frankly, I had sort of forget that Machac was so highly ranked as to be 21^st seed. I also had no idea who this qualifier was or what had gone on in that match out on Court 12, but clearly it had been a thriller at 4hrs 36mins long. The only take I can possibly offer is to say “listen, fair play” to him.

This win also gave us what is perhaps my favourite moment of Wimbledon thus far from my online fandom perspective. This glorious tweet from friend on Twitter and host of the podcast The Racket Will Talk (great pod, give them a listen) Charlotte that truly sums up my thoughts on that match when I saw the final result:

Today has been a day defined in my mind by a stark contrast in the excitement of concurrent matches. This is a major part of the first week of grand slams; choosing what’s worth your time and what is going to be a straightforward, less engaging matchup.

Most often, that means avoiding the show courts and tuning into what’s going on the outskirts of the grounds. Say hello once again to our new friend August Holmgren, for example.

Occasionally though, you’re caught in two minds. Do you risk dedicating time and attention to Centre Court? Do you, against your better judgement, take the gamble that Novak Djokovic vs Dan Evans might be more interesting than you initially thought?

To catch the good stuff, you’ve got to be making those calls early on. Obviously tuning in once things have already become clearly “good” isn’t a bad thing, but that’s time wasted. That’s precious time spent on a less engaging match that could have been spent on a better one.

Grand slams are essentially a massive case of FOMO. While you’re watching someone go through the motions on Court One, there is potentially the greatest match of the entire tournament occurring at the same time and you’d have no idea.

What makes that worse when watching from home in the modern age is how easy it is to switch matches. No choice of what you watch is a massive commitment. I can switch streams in less than 30 seconds; I am not wedded to anything.

When you’re actually attending a slam, that feeling does subside massively. Firstly, the sight of tennis in the flesh up close is extremely cool no matter who you’re watching. It sounds obvious, but you also can’t just change your mind on what you watch at the click of a button.

If you’re on Court 12 at Wimbledon but decide that actually you want to take a punt on Court Three because it might be a bit more engaging, that’s a commitment. You have to wait until a change of ends, get out of Court 12 and then join the queue for Court Three, and that is not a short queue.

For watching at home, using multiple screens gets around the problems somewhat. I personally use the TV as a “second screen” and then put my iPad as the top priority match since it’s physically closer to me.

Even then, however, you run into problems of what gets chosen as the priority screen and what gets demoted to the occasional glance. It’s even more choices to be made, more wrong decisions, more and more FOMO.

Today I want to chat a little bit about the choices that were made in my household and whether I was satisfied with those choices. If nothing else, you get a sense of the insanity that is running through my mind during week one of a slam as I try catch the entertainment as well as the key storylines of every day.

Moutet vs Dimitrov

The second I saw this match was on today’s order of play, I knew I had to be tuned in from ball one. Corentin Moutet is a truly magical player. A Frenchman known for his amazing court craft, variety and improvisation, Moutet is perfect for the natural surfaces where his skillset is truly rewarded.

Moutet is also a very whiney and bratty figure at the best of times, which makes appreciating some of that wizardry with a racket a slightly harder sell. I got to watch him out on Court Simone Matthieu at Roland Garros against a French qualifier and saw firsthand the French crowd vociferously boo and whistle at him for petulantly throwing his racket across the ground. The full Moutet experience, truly.

His match against Grigor Dimitrov today was a delight to watch; two proper grass court players playing proper grass court tennis. Moutet brings his own magic, but Dimitrov is a great watch as well. He brings precise point construction and an attractive game, dictating with his forehand and utilising his excellent backhand slice to great effect.

Dimitrov is no stranger to the forecourt and so he was never caught out when Moutet tried to drag him forward. Where others might be constantly caught looking awkward, Dimitrov looks perfectly comfortable coping with the trickery from the Frenchman.

That didn’t stop him from losing points despite this, however. Moutet’s shot selection has a touch of Alcaraz about it in that it might not always be the “right” or “best” choice on paper, but he can still win the point because his execution is just that good.

Hitting a drop shot when you’re several metres behind the baseline is often not recommended since it gives your opponent so much time to get there, but Moutet takes it on and hits winners from that position because it’s such a clean execution and lands so precisely by the net.

It was a selection of highlight-worthy tennis from both for the whole match. Attacking tennis, delightful passing shots and meek one-handed backhand returns into the net. This was, truly, the full grass court experience.

All four sets of this match were very competitive, too. Dimitrov won all three of his sets 7-5 but lead by a break before being pegged back every time. He was never able to properly shake Moutet off despite his best efforts.

Overall, Moutet delivered everything asked of him. He made the match fun, he made it very competitive, and he made sure he didn’t ruin the vibes by winning. I was delighted that the match delivered when I was expecting it to- it’s not often that happens!

Djokovic vs Evans and Rybakina vs Sakkari

While Court Three had a delightful time with its European grass court specialists, you could instead have been watching the thrilling matches on Centre Court and Court One of Djokovic vs Evans (6-3, 6-2, 6-0) and Mirra Andreeva vs Lucia Bronzetti (6-1, 7-6).

I watched none of Andreeva’s win because I knew full well that it was likely to be very straightforward. I also knew that was going to be the case for Novak Djokovic, but family politics meant the TV had to be showing a Brit and so the cheering for Evans began.

It’s matches like that on Centre Court that make you wonder what we’re all even doing here. What is anyone gaining by this match taking place? Are the people in the stands on Centre Court really getting their money’s worth? Are the commentators and BBC presenters having to try hype up Dan Evans not deeply bored by the whole occasion? I certainly was.

In fairness, you could at least appreciate just how good Novak Djokovic was out there today. In grand slams, Djokovic has become hyper-focused on efficiency. He does not want to be out on that court any longer than required, he needs to stay fresh and injury free and so he’s not wasting his time.

Djokovic in full flight is very impressive and shows that when he needs to, he can pull out great tennis almost effortlessly. Even at 38 it can look like an extended practice session. I’m not sure I would dedicate multiple hours to watch a Djokovic practice session, though.

There was then a transition from Djokovic’s match ending to Elena Rybakina against Maria Sakkari starting up on Court One. Sakkari is hardly the elite player she once was in 2021 and 2022, but I thought there was a half chance of something interesting occurring that might be second screen material.

It might well have been had Sakkari been able to make more of the chances Rybakina was giving her. The former Wimbledon champion was having a difficult time landing first serves in the first set, but Sakkari never truly capitalised in the rallies that this caused.

This was a match that never truly got going or amounted to anything interesting. Rybakina didn’t require anything amazing to comfortably dispatch Sakkari 6-3, 6-1, and so priority went back to Dimitrov-Moutet on the iPad.

So far, the show courts had given us the easiest win of Djokovic’s year and two pretty lifeless matches on Court One. Hardly surprising but hardly thrilling either.

Iga Swiatek vs Caty McNally

By this point in the afternoon, I had been reduced to one screen for the foreseeable future. This, as you can imagine, was a particularly harrowing time for a FOMO-consumed viewer.

I had to make a choice between watching my favourite and yours Iga Swiatek or tuning into Brit Jack Draper’s match against former Wimbledon finalist Marin Cilic. I made the only sensible choice without a moment’s hesitation: Iga Swiatek.

This match ended up surprisingly interesting for a bit. Swiatek raced to an early 4-1 lead but was pegged back by McNally who managed to take the opening set 7-5 after a particularly poor drop off in Swiatek’s level.

The next two sets ended up quite straightforward for the Pole but still took their time as she kept easily generating break point chances on the McNally serve but couldn’t seem to convert them. The match ended 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 for Swiatek but took almost two and a half hours.

Meanwhile on Court One, Marin Cilic was rolling back the years and took a two sets to love lead over Draper. Even though I was aware Cilic was taking a lead over our British hope, my loyalty to Swiatek never faltered.

Swiatek’s win was perhaps not the most thrilling match in the end, but as a fan I was filled with anxiety at her tomfoolery of a first set loss and inability to break McNally early in the second. There was no way I was turning my back on her! I was rewarded with some quality tennis from my favourite and yours in the end, so it was worthwhile.

Jack Draper vs Marin Cilic

I caught the last two sets of this match live with Swiatek safely through to the Third Round. I saw Draper begin to mount a comeback with a good 6-1 set, seemingly beginning to wrestle some control of the match back from his Croatian opponent.

The fourth set played out much closer to sets one and three, a close affair up until Draper serving at 3-4 at which point Cilic began to gain a healthy number of break point chances. Draper held from 0-40 to keep himself alive, much to the Court One crowd’s delight, but succumbed to his fate at 4-5.

I had seen some good Draper tennis and some good Cilic tennis, but I didn’t really feel like I had a sense of the match proper with the two sets I watched. The damage had been done by the time I got there when Draper had found himself two sets down.

Through informants (Gill Gross on Twitter, my brother at home) I discovered Cilic had been rolling back the years in the truest sense to play lights-out tennis. Another “listen, fair play” is in order, I think.

At home and with most of the day’s play finished- I watched a bit of Ben Shelton playing well to finish my live viewing- I opted to load up the BBC iPlayer replay for Court One and watch those two sets I missed.

Yes, after all this intense FOMO and concern at missing good tennis or key storylines, I remembered I can in fact watch anything I missed on demand at any time.

First of all, as we say on Twitter: lol, lmao even. Secondly, thank god for replays. Seriously, they’re so valuable especially at the grand slams played outside of the European time zone.

I will say though, that it feels very different watching a match on the replay when you already know the result. You just don’t engage with it in quite the same way. You can obviously appreciate the good tennis and understand the tactical intricacies, but you lose the sense of jeopardy that comes from live tennis. There wasn’t the same sense of anxiety watching those first two sets I would have got had I seen it happening live.

One solution of course is to avoid finding out the score of the match before you start the replay. I think this is a neat idea, but in practice I would find that really quite hard. It would mean turning off all notifications on TNNSLive (the app I use to track results) and probably avoiding social media all together to avoid spoilers.

Now that might sound like a good idea for my life more broadly, but it is also not entirely feasible to cut off all internet access, especially as someone whose sense of self-worth in part comes from being a quasi-pundit/analyst online. Ya gotta get those takes in while they’re still somewhat relevant!

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In the end, despite my horrific fear of missing the good stuff, I think I made the right choices with what I watched. The match of the day for me- Dimitrov vs Moutet- delivered in exactly the way I hoped it would, my favourite and yours Iga Swiatek won, and, in the end, I saw all of the biggest story of the day in Draper losing. Good stuff!!

Despite that though, I still think a lot about how many of the show court matches were duds. Djokovic and Sinner both won on Centre Court dropping five games- I didn’t even mention Sinner because I had zero interest in watching him crush Vukic today.

There were only two matches on show courts that ended up even close to being seriously competitive in Swiatek vs McNally and Draper vs Cilic. It really made me ask my favourite question a lot: what are we doing here?

The answer if you’re in the stadium is what I was doing on Court Philipe Chatrier for Round One of Roland Garros: watching the greatest player of all time in the flesh. That is pretty damn cool even if he’s winning really easily!

Seeing the stars in person more than makes up for lacklustre spectacle in my opinion, and this is coming from someone who has lived that exact experience. Watching on TV, however, is a far duller and more pointless affair.