As the last 16 in men's and women's singles prepare to do battle Johnny Wattersonlooks forward to a succession of closer calls.
SATURDAY WAS a day that enhanced more reputations than it damaged. The named players as well as the top seeds hit what they considered their first real target, the weekend.
After a week in which two of the top three women's seeds, Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic, as well as the men's sixth seed, Andy Roddick, perished, yesterday was a welcome chance to recharge the batteries.
Today the final 16 from each of the two singles draws of 128 begin to meet opponents more equal in standard and expectation.
Among the men two non-seeds remain, and those at the top will consider them particularly dangerous.
Marat Safin and Mario Ancic are hanging in, Ancic recovering enough from glandular fever and a shoulder injury to be a possible threat to Roger Federer if the title holder finds his way past Lleyton Hewitt. Ancic is the last man to have beaten Federer at Wimbledon, Hewitt the last to win the title before the Swiss number one's hegemony.
Hewitt will certainly be the most bombastic opponent Federer has met in the half of the draw that also contains the ursine and unpredictable Safin.
But Hewitt's yard-dog appeal and hustling game have not been enough for him in his last 11 meetings with the champion, and though the master Federer has been talking a better game in the media centre than he has been playing on court, the poor form of the 20th seed and his slide down the rankings suggest his celebrated ability to go the full 12 rounds with anybody on the planet has been in decline.
With Ancic facing the Spanish 22nd seed Fernando Verdasco, the likely outcome is a quarter-final meeting between Federer and the Croatian, who is a throwback with his net play and big serve.
Below them Safin, still the crowd favourite, plays Switzerland's Stanislas Wawrinka, the 13th seed, while the Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis faces another Spaniard, Feliciano Lopez.
In the bottom half of the draw there is doubtless a frisson in the air over London. The difference between Andy Murray and Tim Henman is that with Henman the question was when would he be beaten. With Murray there is a fascination with how good he is, though no one has yet cursed him with the dreaded last British win of Fred Perry and 1936.
Murray, who beat Germany's Tommy Haas 6-4, 6-7, 6-3, 6-2 on Saturday, meets a talented player who has the shots but maybe not the mental toughness.
If Richard Gasquet, the French number one, the eighth seed, a semi-finalist at Wimbledon 2007 and a four-set winner over Gilles Simon on Saturday, could apply Hewitt's grit, then Federer and Rafael Nadal would rightly worry.
If Murray clears Gasquet he could meet Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals. First, of course, Rafa must himself see off the Russian Mikhail Youzhny in today's extravaganza of choice matches.
At mid-point of the women's draw it is becoming increasingly hard to escape the Williams effect. How quickly the sixth and seventh seeds have positioned themselves as favourites!
Six times in eight years one sister or the other has conquered Wimbledon - Venus four times, Serena two - and now they have done their warm-up of the first week, the business end should see them crank up their grass games that little bit more.
Venus has already done that in her third-round win, 6-1, 7-5, over the Spanish left-hander Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez, unleashing her fastest Wimbledon serve, a 127mph ace, on the last point just to prove the point.
Serena has been more sluggish in providing the wow factor, though she has not conceded a set so far.
Serena takes on the only American, man or woman, not called Williams who is still standing at Wimbledon.
She is Bethanie Mattek, a 23-year-old ranked 69 who saw off last year's runner-up, Marion Bartoli, in the last round.
Serena won their only previous match, two years back in Cincinnati, at a cost of four games.
For Venus, the four-time winner and defending champion, progress has been if anything even smoother, and she faces another woman who is not exactly a household name in these parts, Alisa Kleybanova, one of the horde of young, emerging Russians.
Kleybanova is 18 but is already ranked in the top 50.
If Venus beats Kleybanova the road is likely to get considerably harder; she will probably meet the second seed, Jelena Jankovic.
The highest-ranked woman still involved, Jankovic laboured to a third-round win on Centre Court against the 17-year-old Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark before hobbling off with an injured knee. But the Serb did not let that affect her sense of humour.
She did not know who her next opponent was and when told "a Thai girl", she asked, "Tiger who? Tiger Woods?" Not exactly.
It is Tamarine Tanasugarn, who has been playing tennis to match her bewitching name. If the Jankovic knee holds out, and like Woods at this year's US Open, she was wincing throughout the final games of her match, she can be comforted that a likely meeting with Venus is next up.
"If I don't have the power that I have, then I get a lot closer to average," said Venus after the Sanchez match.
"I think the power, with my movement and strokes adds a ton to my game."
The others lurking in the bottom half, all well versed in the sisters Williams, are the fifth seed Elena Dementieva, who faces Israeli Shahar Peer, and the Russian who knocked out Maria Sharapova, Alla Kudryavtseva.
WIMBLEDON RESULTS
Third round: Janko Tipsarevic (Ser) bt (25) Dmitry Tursunov (Rus) 7-6 (7-1) 7-6 (7-3) 6-3, (9) Rainer Schuettler (Ger) bt Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Spa) 6-2 6-3 6-4, Marin Cilic (Cro) bt (14) Paul-Henri Mathieu (Fra) 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 6-4 7-6 (9-7), Arnaud Clement (Fra) bt Jurgen Melzer (Aut) 4-6 6-3 6-4 6-4, (8) Richard Gasquet (Fra) bt (28) Gilles Simon (Fra) 6-3 6-3 6-7 (3-7) 6-3, (12) Andrew Murray (Brit) bt Tommy Haas (Ger) 6-4 6-7 (4-7) 6-3 6-2, (17) Mikhail Youzhny (Rus) bt (16) Radek Stepanek (Cze) 7-5 6-7 (5-7) 6-4 6-7 (4-7) 6-3, (2) Rafael Nadal (Spa) bt (27) Nicolas Kiefer (Ger) 7-6 (7-3) 6-2 6-3.
WOMEN'S SINGLES
Third round: (5) Elena Dementieva (Rus) bt Gisela Dulko (Arg) 7-6 (7-2) 7-5, (24) Shahar Peer (Isr) bt (9) Dinara Safina (Rus) 7-5 6-7 (4-7) 8-6, (21) Nadia Petrova (Rus) bt (16) Victoria Azarenka (Blr) 7-6 (13-11) 7-6 (7-4), Alla Kudryavtseva (Rus) bt Shuai Peng (Chn) 6-3 1-6 6-4, (7) Venus Williams (USA) bt Martinez Sanchez (Spa) 6-1 7-5, Alisa Kleybanova (Rus) bt Ai Sugiyama (Jpn) 6-4 6-4, Tamarine Tanasugarn (Tha) bt Marina Erakovic (Nzl) 4-6 6-4 6-4, (2) Jelena Jankovic (Ser) bt (31) Caroline Wozniacki (Den) 2-6 6-4 6-2.
TODAY'S ORDER OF PLAY
(All times local)
Centre Court: 1pm: (1) Roger Federer (Swi) v (20) Lleyton Hewitt (Aus), (4) Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) v (14) Agnieszka Radwanska (Pol), (8) Richard Gasquet (Fra) v (12) Andrew Murray (Brit).
Court Number One: 1pm: (18) Nicole Vaidisova (Cze) v (8) Anna Chakvetadze (Rus), (17) Mikhail Youzhny (Rus) v (2) Rafael Nadal (Spa), Marat Safin (Rus) v (13) Stanislas Wawrinka (Swi).
Court Number Two: Noon: (7) Venus Williams (USA) v Alisa Kleybanova (Rus), Bethanie Mattek (USA) v (6) Serena Williams (USA), Janko Tipsarevic (Ser) v (9) Rainer Schuettler (Ger), (5) Anabel Medina Garrigues (Spa) and Virginia Ruano Pascual (Spa) v (11) Serena Williams (USA) and Venus Williams (USA).
