A tennis miscellany
Height of it: Anderson towers
SOUTH AFRICAN Kevin Anderson, who played Novak Djokovic yesterday, measured in at 6ft 7in, which is even tall among tennis players. But the tallest male player ever to feature on the ATP tour is not playing this year. Ivo Karlovic is 6ft 10in, while John Isner, who famously took part last year on Court 18 in the longest match ever played, is 6ft 9in.
In the women’s game there is a tie for the tallest player title. Akgul Amanmuradova (right) from Uzbekistan fell to Venus Williams in the first round this year, is 6ft 6in, or, four inches taller than Roger Federer. Eva Hrdinova from the Czech republic is also 6ft 6in.
Yanks a lot: Americans still around
MUCH of the talk in the first week has been of how Americans no longer dominate in the men’s game and have difficulty getting into Grand Slam finals in the way Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras were able to do. That despite there being more American men in the singles draw than any other nation. There are 30 Americans among the 128 starters. Britain has 23 with the help of some wild cards, and France and Germany 20 each. Russia only provide seven in the men’s singles while in the women’s event they are second behind the USA with 23 first round players. Australia, once a powerhouse, has just eight.
Views and clicks get bigger
TELEVISION is big business for Wimbledon. In 2010 there were 10,702 hours broadcast to 187 territories. But the two markets that were by far the biggest were Britain and the USA, with 204 million and 123 million viewing hours respectively.Like every other media outlet online is also big business and in 2010 over 11.5 million unique users logged on to www.wimbledon.com \ with an average time on the site of 81.84 minutes.
Serena left on the outside
SERENA Williams was put on an outside court number two yesterday and wasn’t best pleased. She is used to the more controlled environments of the show courts where there are tunnels for the players to use. An outside court means that he American super star has to walk through the throngs of people to get there. But the champion said that she now uses it as a warm up.“I look at that as a kind of warm up, trying to walk out there. I’m like, okay this gets my legs moving.”
