Wimbledon Crisis Center, Day 1

By Rosangel Valenti, TW Contributing Editor

Good morning. Two weeks after signing off on the Roland Garros Crisis Centers, I'm back with your regularly scheduled Wimbledon Crisis Centers. Here is today's Order of Play, with defending men's Champion Roger Federer opening proceedings against Dominik Hrbaty at 1 p.m. local time, as is traditional. Hrbaty, incidentally, is one of very few players to possess a positive head-to-head over Federer - it's 2-0, though they haven't met on a court for almost four years. Hrbaty is also 3-1 against number two Rafael Nadal (they haven't met since 2005).

During The Championships, you will have a fresh post each day, to coincide with the start of the day's tennis in SW19. Because we expect a heavy volume of traffic on these posts, we ask that you steer clear of off-topic comments during the day - as events wind down at the end of the day, some off-topic discussion is OK. In the meantime, today Ed McGrogan will be along with his usual Monday Net Post - where off-topic comments are always OK.

As usual, once the current Crisis Center post accumulates 1000 comments or more, we will, if needed, put up a continuation Crisis Center to tide us over until tomorrow.

Today I feel as though I'm coming full circle here in TW, because the first time I put up a headline post here by myself was on the first day of Wimbledon in 2007. Pete was going away for a few days, working on the Pete Sampras book, and I had agreed to help out, because I know the tournament well, having once lived a stone's throw away from the AELTC, and was intending to attend there on several different days. On that day, I put up here a picture of Bjorn Borg, because one of the big questions of the tournament was whether Roger Federer could equal Borg's 5-in-a-row. I also posted a picture of Borg on the first day of Roland Garros this year, for similar reasons. Borg looms large over this year's Championships too - it's possible that either Federer could beat his record of consecutive titles, or Rafael Nadal could become the first man to win a "Channel Slam" double since Borg achieved the feat (for a third time) in 1980. We also shouldn't forget that the defending ladies' Champion, Venus Williams, is looking for a fifth Wimbledon title.

Daily Weather Report:

During Roland Garros, I was forced to rely on forecasts. Today, as I now still live reasonably close to Wimbledon, and have a good view from the top of my house, I'm happy to report that the day is bright and dry. Although there's cloud cover, the clouds are high up and mostly brilliant white, with patches of blue breaking out from in between them. The local weather forecast also suggests a good day on the weather front - we could get more sun later on.

The whole week looks promising weather-wise - unlike last year's watery nightmare, I'm very much hoping for a fortnight that doesn't involve 11 a.m. early starts on most days that are not rained off, as the tournament tries to catch up on scheduling. I plan to attend some matches at Wimbledon this year, and am a fan of the civilised 1 p.m. start on the main courts - it's tough to get over to the tournament from where I live through rush-hour traffic, park the car (by necessity, a long way away from the gates), pick up a ticket, and get into a seat by 11 a.m., after passing through elaborate security procedures. Today at least, I'll be watching on TV like most of the Tribe.

As always, enjoy the tennis.