Wimbledon Day 2

So there were six British losers today ( see post – Day 1 ). Fortunately, I can’t count, so Elena Baltacha joined Murray in round 2, and Alona Bondarenko continued to cement her place as a trader’s dream. However, having watched the latter stages of the match on the BBC (red button), I thought the Brit played rather well.

Thoughts of the day –

i. The men’s draw went generally to plan. I suppose the biggest surprise was Youzhny, a renowned fighter, losing in three sets to Juan-Carlos Ferrero.

ii. Whilst most of last week’s successes have struggled, Benny Becker sailed through in straight sets, losing nine games. Expect the tiredness to kick in soon!

iii. A low key end at Marat Safin’s Wimbledon career out on Court 18. A pity to lose one of the games’ great characters – there aren’t too many around.

iv. I’m sure there must have been a few nerves in punting circles when Kimiko Date took the first set off Caroline Wozniaki, who’s been hyped up by many over the last couple of days. P.S. - Date’s first Wimbledon appearance ended in defeat to Zena Garrison. The year? 1989!

v. What on earth has happened to Nicole Vaidisova? She couldn’t have hand-picked a much more favourable first round opponent.

vi. Just when we thought we had a consistent British woman! Keothavong somehow managed to lose to Patricia Mayr, career record on grass before today, 0-1.

Won on all today’s bets. Yeah! Czink actually lost to Mauresmo, but I’d arrived home in time to green up at 6-1, 2-5. With a couple of hours trading this evening, day 2 gave me a £59.45 profit. Steady and, er, unspectacular!

I kept an eye on my selections using my I-phone thoughout the day. The Hanescu / Navarro game turned into a long five-setter, ending at 12-10 in the fifth. You have to admire Navarro. Ten sets last week in s’Hertogenbosch, sixty-seven games today. Tough guy. My score-checker of choice – Flashscore.com – doesn’t show fifth set scores after 6-6 (!?), so switched to Livescore.com to follow the climax. Noticed that Livescore had Agnieszka Radwanska due to play Mary Jo Fernandez. I was about to ring Betfair to put my bank on the 14th ranked Pole against a 37 year old American mother of two who retired nine years ago. Sadly, I found she was actually playing Maria-Jose Martinez Sanchez, so left my bank intact.

I work nearer to home for the latter part of each week, so should have time for a reasonable in-play trading session. Therefore I’ll probably only have a bet on Djokovic from the lunchtime matches. There seems to be more opportunities for trading than backing in most of the early games. Azarenka, Sugiyama and Robredo look a little short to me.

I’m missing Glastonbury (again) this year. We did agree on our six festivals for the year long ago, but I’m now getting itchy feet as the weekend approaches. Suppose I’ll see plenty of Wimbledon instead. Hmm.