Wimbledon Crisis Center, Day 8

Good mornin', on the greatest day in tennis: the second Monday at Wimbledon. Take a gander at the order of play and mourn that you can't be in five different places at once. Bernard Tomic (I just can't bring myself to call a kid "Bernie") is already hard at work, matched up with Xavier Malisse on Court 18. I plan to take in some or all of that as soon as I finish this Crisis Center.

One reason this day is so loaded with quality matches is because of the traditional Sunday break, which is an odd, vestigal habit, not unlike the "blue laws" in the U.S. that prohibit the sale of alcohol before noon on Sunday, or even the prohibition of Sunday hunting in some states. Just imagine the amount of money Wimbledon is losing by going dark on the middle Sunday, and don't think for a moment that the club isn't aware of it. Yet the off-Sunday habit persists. Let nobody accuse the AEC of being motivated exclusively by profit.

I like the middle Sunday concept because it dramatically reinforces my conviction that a Grand Slam is actually two tournaments: a qualifying event in which even the very top players are compelled to take part, which ends on the middle Saturday. And then the tournament proper gets underway. When you think of it that way, you can see why the main ambition of so many of the leading players is to just reach the relative haven of week two. We all know that in tennis, people can play up—or down—to an occasion, which is why a Top 20 player forced to play a Challenger can easily lose and eventually find himself mired in a terrible slump.

-- Pete