Wimbledon 2023: Day One

What was Venus Williams thinking! 😱 I was mid-writing my previous post when I saw news of Venus lying, screaming on Centre Court with a knee injury. I felt the pain! I gasped and exclaimed - oh no!!!!! out loud in public! Why oh why did she carry on? ☹️😓 I hope there's no permanent damage. Where there's a scream, there's a serious, massive tear, usually a tendon or ligament that doesn't recover in a hurry. 

I limped on to finish my match in France with a knee injury, which was sprayed and taped by the trainer mid-match. But it didn't heal for ages and I was left with an oval burn mark under my knee, where he sprayed it, for years after! I hadn't slipped, hadn't fallen, wasn't screaming, it was just a standard knee pain/injury. But even so, it took too long to heal and so interrupted my rhythm, training and run of tournaments. So it was a bad decision to carry on. My mother didn't want me to carry on with the match but I did it anyway. It ended up being my last tournament so my advice would be never play through injury. Although I carried on training and entering ITF tournaments as a professional status player throughout my university years, my knee was never good enough to train hard enough to be able to compete. As soon as I went up a gear my knee would become worse and I'd have to have a couple of days off. So, like many players, I thought I might as well get a degree while injured! 👩‍🎓

Now, my knee is fine and has been for ages.

Venus went on to lose in unhappy circumstances and, to show her displeasure, didn't shake hands with the umpire. People rushed to social media to denounce her. Why? It's not uncommon for players to do this, especially the men, and those who feel they've been hard done by, for instance, they feel that the match was in some way unfair because of the decisions made by the umpire. How else do players show their disapproval of the umpire? Since when are umpires deemed infallible? Hawk eye came in because umpires were making bad decisions. 

I'm pleased Strycova has come back to Wimbledon, having missed out, partly because of the pandemic and partly due to Wimbledon being cancelled 2020, just when she was on a roll and had finally entered the hallowed Wimbledon Members Club. She then also missed out later because she was pregnant. Undeterred, Strycova has now come back and won her first round match at Wimbledon as a mother of a son. 👏👏👏👏And Tay Townsend deserves a mention because she is doing inspirationally well after also having a son and taking maternity leave. 🎊 Speaking of sons Barty has just had a gorgeous son. 👶🎉 

But then the rain came down. It was horrendous. I was wet and decidedly unhappy. 🌧️☔😞 Rain stopped play at Wimbledon and it's costing Wimbledon money in refunds. Meanwhile, Djokovic has a new side hustle job: drying grass courts. 🫧🌱🧻🤣