Sunshine, Rain, and the "Who's the Greatest?" Debate

Well, after such a promising opening day to the event yesterday, today has been a major frustration. We've been incredibly lucky to avoid major rain interruption for some years now. From memory, I think this is the first time since 1997 that an entire day's play has been washed out. The decision that there would be no chance of play today was announced at 4:50pm, not long before it was confirmed that the highly anticipated Aegon Championships final in London, between Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, would also not be played today. Speculation grows as to whether Tsonga will make the jouney to Eastbourne after all.
Sunday's bad weather was well forecast, and the prediction for Saturday wasn't brilliant. But the first day was almost entirely sunny, albeit with a cold wind (quelle surprise!). There was some high quality tennis on a variety of different courts, as qualifying matches were crammed in. Perhaps the best match on centre court was between Brit Anne Keothavong and France's Alize Cornet. Keothavong overwhelmed higher-ranked Cornet, 8th seed in the qualifying event, but was the only one of five British women to reach the next stage.
All the men who won their first qualifying matches were back later in the day - and that included five Brits. All second round men's ties were also completed, with only Alex Slabinsky left to fly the flag for the UK in the final qualifying round. The biggest tennis names in that final round are Germany's 35 year old former world no.5 Rainer Schuettler, and America's former child prodigy Donald Young.
It seemed a day for players who were once tipped to reach the very top, are yet to achieve that, but when they play well, it's hard to take your eyes off them. Mirjana Lucic, who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals as a 17 year old in 1999, lost in the quarter finals of the Aegon Classic in Birmingham on Friday, but beat Yaroslava Shvedova at Eastbourne on Saturday. Indian superstar Sania Mirza won her opening match in three hard-fought sets. Austrian Tamira Paszek beat the USA's Vania King and is now the first woman through to the third qualifying round - without striking a ball - after her next opponent Greta Arn withdrew. Hungary's Arn beat Russian-born Australian Anastasia Rodionova, who won gold medals in singles and doubles at last year's Commonwealth Games. But Arn had a fall late on in the match, and completed it with a heavily-bandaged knee.
And Melanie Oudin, who wowed her home crowd - and much of the rest of the world - when she reached the US Open quarter finals as a 17 year old in 2009, easily beat China's Xinyun Han. I had the pleasure of speaking to her briefly, and telling her that I like the way she plays tennis, and the fact that her principal idol is the great Justine Henin.
When I referred to Serena Williams as the "Queen of Tennis" in my last post, I should explain that, in my opinion, if everyone had played close to their best, consistently, in the last few years, the rankings would have been a no-brainer: Henin first, Serena second, and Venus third. When Henin shocked the tennis world by retiring as world no. 1 in 2008, she had won seven Grand Slam titles - just one less than Serena (plus Olympic singles Gold, which Serena has yet to win), and the same number as Venus. By the time of Henin's return to the game at the start of 2010, Venus had won another Slam (Wimbledon 2008), and Serena had taken three more. As Henin tried to regain form in what turned out to be all-too-brief a comeback, Serena won a further two Slams, taking her career total so far to 13. Were it not for Henin's absence, the story could have been very different.
But Henin's absence, and difficulties in regaining form on her return, cannot be compared to Monica Seles's absence, and subsequent difficulties, which occured of course due to the most appallingly unnatural of circumstances - that stabbing incident. In Seles's case, her career total Grand Slam titles (9) versus that of her great rival Steffi Graf (22) have to be taken with a massive dollop of salt when assessing each player's greatness.
In the case of Justine and Serena, however, I can't object to Serena being declared the greatest of her generation.
And Venus isn't too bad a player, either.
I finally met her this Saturday. "Venus, it's so great to see you back in Eastbourne," I crawled, but meant it. "I remember when you first came here when you were 17 or 18."
"Thankyou," she smiled. "It's been a while."