Wimbledon: 1st Round Predictions for Day 2

Elena Vesnina

The biggest surprise on the first day of the 2012 Wimbledon Championships saw the number six seed, Tomas Berdych bundled out of the tournament by Ernests Gulbis, 7-6 7-6 7-6 in a terrific Centre Court match.  I questioned Berdych being put on Centre Court over Federer but massive credit to the schedulers for calling this one correctly.  John Isner was another surprise exit in the mens as he was beaten by Alejandro Falla, 6-4 6-7 3-6 7-6 7-5.  Falla, who nearly upstaged Roger Federer in the first match of Wimbledon in 2010, played a stunning match against a lacklustre Isner, who was many people's tip as a dark horse to reach the quarter-finals.

The womens saw the majority of the top seeds progress, but there was one surprise as an error-strewn Venus Williams was comprehensively beaten in round one by Elena Vesnina.  I really thought she would reach the second week, but it was not to be as Vesnina played a very solid match to set up a second round match with Agnieszka Radwanska.  Maria Sharapova was broken serving for both sets against Anastasia Rodionova, but was ultimately untroubled in a 6-2 6-3 win.  There were also straight set wins for Sam Stosur, Li Na, Angelique Kerber and Sabine Lisicki, who snapped a losing streak with a very impressive win over Petra Martic.

It was a frantic end to the day as the Brit, Heather Watson produced an excellent serving performance to sweep past Iveta Benesova, 6-2 6-1.  Daniela Hantuchova joined Flavia Pennetta and Monica Niculescu as early seeded casualties; Hantuchova's conqueror, Jamie Hampton will now take on Heather Watson in the second round.  The matches between Vera Zvonareva and Mona Barthel, and Christina McHale and Johanna Konta will finish off tomorrow with both into deciding sets; in fact McHale has already served for the match twice against Konta but will resume at 7-7.

The top 10 on Day 2

Caroline Wozniacki to beat Tamira Paszek in 3 sets (this one could really go either way!!!)

Laura Robson to beat Francesca Schiavone in 3 sets

Coco Vandeweghe to beat Sara Errani in 3 sets

Svetlana Kuznetsova to beat Yanina Wickmayer in 2 sets

Ana Ivanovic to beat Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez in 2 very tight sets

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to beat Lleyton Hewitt in 3 sets

Andy Roddick to beat Jamie Baker in 3 sets

Grigor Dimitrov to beat Kevin Anderson in 4 sets

Tommy Haas to beat Philipp Kohlschreiber in 4 sets

Andy Murray to beat Nikolay Davydenko in 4 sets

Highlights from the Gulbis/Berdych match... I love Berdych's nod at the handshake to Gulbis basically saying that was good man!!!

I have updated my original draws for the womens and mens so you can see my progress after round one... so far, not too bad and I have both champions intact, which is an improvement from the French Open ;-)