1. The King Of Wimbledon Is Dethroned
If the high drama that had already happened on "Withdrawal Wednesday" could be topped, it surely would not be at the hands of Roger Federer. The King of Wimbledon had spent two years in the closest thing to the Wimbledon wilderness he possibly could after failing to make it out of the quarter finals, only to win the title yet again in 2012. As warmup for the 2013 tournament, he went to the Halle warm-up tournament and was victorious for a sixth time. If Nadal isthe King of Clay, then Federer has every right to call himself the King of Grass. His route to the final was similarly difficult as Nadal's, with the two rivals seemingly locked to play in the quarter finals. When Nadal went out to Darcis, Federer's section of the draw seemed to be marginally easier and as the second round went on, more tricky opponents seemed to fall by the wayside and Federer's route onwards seemed fairly easy. Stepping out on to his "home" of Centre Court, the King had every right to be eyeing up the likely semi final with Andy Murray as his next real challenge. In his way though was another man ready to give it his all in a fight. Sergiy Stakhovsky had only ever made it to the second round of Wimbledon once before, but had once been ranked as high as 31 in the world - now a lowly 116. But like Brown & Hewitt and Dulcis & Nadal before, any gulf in rankings was quickly thrown out during the opening few games. Stakhovsky held with Federer, whose serve seemed to falter at times during the match. Unable to break Stakhovsky, Federer soon found his first set lead evaporate to the point that Stakhovsky was soon two sets and a break up in the fourth set. Frustration set in; Federer nearly took his opponent's head off with an errant power shot, seemingly being slow on his apology also.