Wimbledon Day One: Preview, Live Blog, Betting Tips

Jul 1

Jul 1 Wimbledon Day One: Preview, Live Blog, Betting Tips

The smell of fresh cut grass and smacked serves is in the air. It's Wimbledon time, y'all.Day one brings an ungodly amount of action and some of it will even be watchable. For the men, the favorite will get his campaign going (Roger Federer takes on Dusan Lajovic on Centre Court at 7 AM CST), the person who will actually win the tournament sets off (Marin Cilic plays Yoshihito Nishioka bright and early at 5:30 AM), and Grigor Dimitrov beats the corpse of Stan Wawrinka with a lead pipe at some point around 10:30 or 11.Big names in the women's game start as well, with both of the Williams sisters and Caroline Wozniacki starting off their tournaments.The first round of a slam is always tennis overload. There are far too many matches to keep tabs on, most of them entirely uninteresting. Fortunately, Wimbledon's streaming suite is extraordinarily good, so if anything becomes interesting, you'll be able to catch all the action.If you're still not sure of what exactly is going on, fortunately for you we have previews!Women!Men!Here's what we're keeping an eye on today.

How healthy is Serena Williams?

Serena is beyond a heavy favorite against Arantxa Rus, so a ho-hum easy win is the most likely outcome. However, Serena had to withdraw from Roland Garros with a shoulder injury and we haven't seen her since.If Serena struggles at all against Rus, that's worth ringing the alarm bells over. There's no reason a healthy Serena Williams doesn't waltz to the quarterfinals without much drama.

The Frenchmen are set to do battle and it's going to rule.

Your match of the day is Gael Monfils vs (23) Richard Gasquet. Monfils is always a heaping spoonful of fun, and Gasquet's backhand is the prettiest one on tour. Gasquet losing would be a surprise, but even if this match isn't competitive, it's La Monf. I'd watch Gael Monfils read the phonebook. For Gasquet, this quarter is gettable. If he puts away Gael, he's in the driver's seat.

Ultimately unimportant matches are going to be really good, and there are a handful of them.

These matches are ultimately what the first few rounds of slams are all about.Will Timea Babos or Lisea Tsurenko win Wimbledon? Absolutely not. But they're two evenly matched players, and that means their match is going to be good. The same holds for Camila Giorgi vs (21) Anastasija Sevastova and Aryna Sabalenka vs (29) Mihaela Buzarnescu.Mikhail Youzhny vs Ivo Karlovic shouldn't be thrown in with this group of matches because the quality of tennis is going to be plague ridden, but it's interesting in it's own very cursed way. Ditto for Laslo Djere and Paolo Lorenzi.

Seeds on upset watch

Here's a full list of seeds that could be packing their bags early.

(5) Elina Svitolina
(16) Coco Vandeweghe
(16) Borna Coric
(17) Lucas Pouille
(20) Pablo Carreno Busta
(21) Anastasija Sevastova
(28) Filip Krajinovic
(29) Mihaela Buzarnescu

Forget The Protocol's very good value bets™

If you choose to gamble based on this, that's entirely your fault.

Gilles Muller -333
Daniil Medvedev +240
Richard Gasquet -182
Laslo Djere +154
Everything you own on Grigor Dimitrov -400
Sloane Stephens -182
Madison Keys -278
Timea Babos +129
Katerina Siniakova +275

Live Blog

8:35 AM: I love getting colds when it's 90 degrees outside. Anyway, here's what we've missed this morning.Federer is wearing UNIQLO apparel now and it looks dope. He won his first round matchup with no problems.The WTA has, yet again, brought the upsets. Out goes Sloane Stephens, out goes Magdalena Rybarikova, and as I typed this, Camila Giorgi goes up a break against Anastasija Sevastova.One notable result that won't get any coverage is Berankis getting an early lead against young American, Mackie McDonald. Berankis has been in awful form lately, and this was a really good chance for Mackie to get a slam win. There's still time, but this isn't how to start.8:59 AM: Well it would seem as though the American women are sputtering out of the gate.After Stephens lost her opener, Venus Williams has dropped her first set. Williams took a spill after getting wrong-footed half way through the tiebreak and then proceeded to dump four serves into the tape to lose the set. For someone who already had loads of questions about her health, that's not a good sign.Elsewhere, Borna Coric and Daniil Medvedev are playing exactly the kind of match I thought they would. Medvedev claimed the first set in a tiebreak 8-6. Coric is, for some reason, a trendy pick to knock out Federer in his quarter. Medvedev is the one who's struck first.9:12 AM: Full marks to Michael Mmoh on taking Gilles Muller to five sets. The American evaporated in a 6-1 thrashing in that deciding set, but getting it to that point is no joke for someone ranked outside of the top 100.Medvedev has consolidated his early break against Coric as he looks to put a stranglehold on this first round match. The biggest upset pick on the men's draw is looking good early.9:30 AM: Second set goes to Venus, and she looked pretty strong doing it. So much for any injury concerns there.Elsewhere, Mackie McDonald grabbed the second set against Berankis, Friend Of The Blog Ivo Karlovic grabbed thes econd set off of Mikhail Youzhny, and Caroline Wozniacki scored the first bagel set of the tournament against Varvara Lepchenko.Also, ESPN showing and talking about David Lee every five seconds during Wozniacki matches is so stupid and I hate it.9:42 AM: Venus breaks and consolidates to begin her third set against Larsson, and it looks like she'll be moving on. Medvedev breaks and consolidates himself to start his third set against Coric. Coric has put on an abysmal showing of ball striking. He's also now officially on full tilt.One of the dark horses of the tournament, Milos Raonic, really struggled in the first set before finally putting it away 7-5, then came storming out of the gate with a 5-0 run to start the second. At this point, I'm pretty much just waiting for Gasquet-Monfils.10:15 AM: Alright, now we're talking. Isner's just about put his first round match away, Raonic is done, and it's time for the two best matches of the day. One of them should be high quality tennis, and the other has big names that are playing like junk.Richard Gasquet is my pick to win this quarter, but the toughest part of his draw may just be the first round matchup against Gael Monfils. Monfils started his season with a title then played in unbearable heat against Novak Djokovic and really hasn't been the same since. Still, he's Gael, and picking against him means picking against one of the most talented guys on tour.The other match is Grigor Dimitrov against Stan Wawrinka. It's hard to put in to words how bad Wawrinka has been, but getting curb stomped 6-1, 6-3 against Andy Murray, who is not fit enough to even play in Wimbledon, is a pretty good place to start. If he takes a set of Dimitrov, there's something seriously wrong with Grigor.10:36 AM: Hey, big congrats to Wawrinka on winning a single game in that first set. God, it is insane how much game he's lost. He simply doesn't look like an ATP player right now, and I'm not sure he ever will again.Meanwhile, Gael Monfils is trying to win a match without ever hitting a single backhand. It's working so far, mostly because Gael is hitting is forehand better than I have ever seen. That match is still on serve.Shoutout to Stefanos Tsitsipas on taking the first set in his first round match. He's very good.Oh, and Serena is playing. It is crazy windy out there right now, and it's maybe making Serena look hurt? We know her pectoral muscle kept her from being able to serve at all and knocked her out of Roland Garros. Her first serve looks really tight, but her second serve is looking untouchable in this wind. She's up an early break.11:15 AM: Wow, first set goes to Monfils.Gael is playing at a really high level right now. He's overing every blade of grass and he's walloping his forehand. As with every match involving Gael Monfils, the question now becomes whether or not Monfils can keep his level up through the match. Starting off the second set with a break is a pretty good sign for Gael.In matches that are less good, Tsitsipas has all but put away his first round match. Serena Williams doesn't look 100% right and is playing in what appears to be a hurricane. She gritted out the first set against Rus 7-5, but she isn't looking like what we know her to be.And, oh, Grigor Dimitrov. After pounding Wawrinka 6-1 in the first, he had to save a set point to get the second set to a tiebreak. Grigor just isn't very good.12:00 PM: Serena moves on! It took 6 match points, but she puts Rus away to move into the second round.This match is why Serena getting a seed was so important. If she played at this level against a seeded player, she'd probably go home. Instead, she's going to move into the second round against another unthreatening opponent, allowing her the chance to play herself into form.Gael Monfils got the break he needed in the second serve and followed it up with an easy hold to claim the second set. He's striking the ball obscenely well, and he immediately becomes a threat in a gettable quarter. He also challenged a shot he hit that was called in, because he's Gael, and he is so pure and so good.Oh, and Grigor Dimitrov had a 3-0 lead in the third set but now he and Stan Wawrinka are back on serve BECAUSE GRIGOR DIMITROV IS A GARBAGE CAN HE IS SO BAD.