Tennis on August 11th

I watched three matches at the evening session - all of which at Centre Court.

Venus Williams looked confidant in beating Timea Bacsinszky 6-3, 6-2. There were some good exchanges but pretty much one-way traffic.

Robby Ginepri was not able to keep up with Novak Djokovic for long in a straight set loss 4-6, 4-6. Robby seemed at times to have enough game for Djokovic but then he somehow didn't seem to want it enough.

Finally, Chinese sweetheart Li Na unexpectedly won against Svetlana Kuznetsova 7-6(5), 6.4 in what was another highlight for the Chinese audience who saw three out of the four Chinese women progress throughout the day.

In other results, Federer won comfortably and Nadal had to go the distance (3 sets) with the Italian Potito Starace.

Final comments to the mess around security for the 5 pm session and the recurring I have that volunteers, in their effort to keep things under control, create even bigger issues. The one I have seen a couple of times is the "bottleneck" one both going in to venue spaces (not venues themselves) and out where there seems to be either only one way or one way out. Clearly they haven't seen what happens when a stampede takes place.

Another note - and also a negative one - for the Chinese crowds in tennis. This isn't news, but clearly they are yet to understand the principle of silence in a tennis match and yesterday repeatedly shouted "out", "uhhed" and "ahhed" during several of the points between Li Na and Kuznetsova. Really, really bad and I hope the crowds can learn how to behave in the next few days or at least get strong referees that push them to do so.