I was discussing Wimbledon’s current results with a tennis coach yesterday.

How can you explain that so many top players including Nadal, Stosur, Berdych, Wozniacki etc. lost in first rounds in London? No difference between #2 Rafael Nadal and # 100 Lukas Rosol?

I watched the match. This was like a replay of Nadal’s loss to Soderling at the French Open 2009. He didn’t play badly. Rosol played very high risk tennis, which was his only chance, and the balls went in. I doubt he will ever have a match like this again.

In the good old days, before technology made every hack into an Ivan Lendl, Roland Garros went to the person who was toughest and fittest, Wimbledon went to the best athlete, and the US Open and Australian Open, went to the best all around game. As the courts are becoming more like one another, this is still fairly true, but everything is compressed.

In the men, we have a top three (Federer, Djokovic, Nadal),  then a good number four. After that I don’t see anyone who can win seven straight matches. Still a big server can ace his way through a match or two on grass. Remember Kevin Current (he played in two Grand Slam singles finals and won four Grand Slam doubles titles)? So Berdych might be overpowered by Gulbis on a good day. Nadal’s game is not suited to grass, but I would never have expected him to lose first round unless he ran into a big hitter who happened to be on that day.

For the women, only Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Victoria Azarenka, and possibly Kim Clijsters, in that order, can control their destiny, and even they can have an off day. After that it’s a flip of the coin.