Taking Warming-Up For Wimbledon To A New Level

Eastbourne offers invaluable preparation ahead of Wimbledon for numerous world-class tennis players. Whether on the practice courts or during actual match play. But Gilles Simon and Feliciano Lopez took it to a whole new level by tuning up for today's first round encounter at the All-England Club by playing each other in the Aegon International final!
It's just the luck of the draw, of course. Lopez and Simon knew, when the Wimbledon first round matches were revealed on Friday morning, that if they beat Ivan Dodig and Andreas Seppi respectively in the Eastbourne semi-finals, they would face each other twice in three days. And, incredibly, considering they've both been close to the top of the game for much of the last few years, they'd only played each other once before - in 2008.
The Eastbourne final was a high quality match, despite the fact that second-seed Simon had struggled with a bug for most of the week, and unseeded world no. 39 Lopez is on the comeback trail after missing a significant amount of the season so far with a wrist injury.
31 year old left-hander Feliciano is unusual for a Spaniard in having a game ideally suited to grass, with his serve-and-volley and backhand slice. He's a three-time Wimbledon quarter-finalist, but is perhaps best known with the wider British public for Judy Murray's "Deliciano Lopez" comments! 
He appeared to have the edge throughout much of the first two sets of the competitive tussle, but Frenchman Gilles was showing his canny ability to rally without error and go for the right shots at the right time. Last week there were several occasions when it seemed his opponents might have too much game for him, but he confounded expectations - as he's often done throughout a career that has seen him reach the world's top ten. This was encapsulated when, close to losing the match in the second set tie-break, a return winner as Lopez attempted to serve-volley gave him the crucial mini-break to lead 6-4, going on to take the tie-break and set up a deciding set. 
But the first grass court title of Feliciano Lopez's career turned out not to be far away as he dominated the final set to triumph 7-6 (7-2), 6-7 (5-7), 6-0. 
And this evening Lopez repeated the result - defeating Simon, the 19th seed at Wimbledon, 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (13-11). Simon, whose play improved considerably by the end of the match (that third set tie-break seeing some truly brilliant tennis from both men), was very unlucky to have to face such a dangerous opponent in the first round. Lopez's Eastbourne victory saw him rise to 32 in the new rankings list - high enough for a Grand Slam seeding but, of course, just too late for this year's Wimbledon.