I want to believe

WIMBLEDON DISPATCH

Having reached the half way mark at the All England Championships, I am at the stage, along with the rest of the British population, that it is perhaps more than a pipedream to imagine we could have a British champion for the first time in my life and some time before that. Only problem? One Novak Djokavic, World #1, #1 seed and, judging by his performance last night, by some margin the most dangerous man left in the draw.

On Friday evening we saw our Andy making short work of his opponent, and we all started to feel a sense of confidence that this time, more than any other time, our boy could romp home, especially since the demise of two players who have proved his nemesis more than once on the Centre Court. But then we saw Djoki dispatch his victim, ranked 25 in the world and therefore not exactly crap, in such style my only word to describe it was, awesome. Murray is good, sure. He's better than I've ever seen him before, and better prepared. He's got Ivan Lendl in his camp, a man who knows a lot about winning at the highest level and seems to have passed much of it on. But can he beat the Serbian warrior? As I say, I want to believe he can. I don't wish to confound him with one of my famous sporting predictions, but he certainly can. Unfortunately that is not the same as will.

Scales fallen from the eyes dept.

One of the most exciting matches so far this year was seeing Federer go down to an unseeded player whom no one has ever heard of before. At one level I felt sorry for the great champion being humbled by an unknown, but there was an incident in the 4th set which made me less sorry. For the first time in my experience of having seen him play dozens of times over the last 10 years, Roger allowed his frustration to get the better of him, and in a net exchange hit the ball savagely at his opponent. With a dodge that would have done credit to a young Mohammed Ali, he just managed to evade the streaking ball, which then sailed out. The look on Federer's face said it all: anger, disappointment, frustration- it was all there, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Suddenly I lost a little of the enormous respect I hold for the great one. If this is the only time he's behaved like this at a major tournament I could feel a bit better about him- after all, we're all allowed the occasional show of anger. It's just that we're used to seeing him as the ultimate shining white knight, and this jarred rather horribly with that image Perhaps he should retire soon, before this sort of thing becomes commonplace with him as he begins his inevitable slide down the rankings.