We had a lovely day at Wimbledon yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, but not too hot, with temperatures going up to 25 degrees and an occasional gentle breeze. We had tickets for Court 3 where we saw three entertaining third round singles matches. We watched the No 11 seed Belinda Bencic play Anna Kalinskaya, seeded 19 (who we saw playing doubles with Sorana Cirstea at Wimbledon last year, reviewed here in July 2025). This was an enthralling three set match with both players making plenty of mistakes. But Bencic always looked the better player and ended up pulling through.
We then watched one of the most bizarre tennis matches we've seen at Wimbledon. Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany beat the No 8 seed, Daniil Medvedev, in straight sets, despite Medvedev leading 4-1 in the second and 5-2 in the third. Medvedev seemed to lose the match by getting increasingly frustrated, going through a phase of exaggerated gestures, followed by a period of sarcastic mutterings as he struggled to beat the huge, Struff serve. But he continued to play brilliantly on occasion, and just when we thought Struff would pull ahead in the face of Medvedev's dips, Struff's first serve appeared to desert him with both players struggling to close out the third set. Arguably the match was won on one amazing moment: Medvedev appeared to have played a brilliant winner with the ball legitimately going around the side of the net and back into court. But Struff asked for a video replay and, after several minutes delay, the replay on the big screen clearly showed that the ball had gone past the other side of the net post, through a gap in the net and out the other side, giving the point to Struff.
Finally, we watched Karolina Muchava, the No 10 seed, playing Mananchaya Sawangkaew of Thailand, the world number 164 who was appearing in her first Wimbledon, having only played one Grand Slam before this, the 2026 Australian Open where she went out in the first round. She had got through to the third round at Wimbledon having beaten Maja Chwalinska, the recent French Open finalist, on the way. At first, we feared this match might be incredibly one-sided, as Muchova took an early lead. But Sawangkaew showed no fear and played very impressively, pushing the second set to a tiebreak before departing to huge cheers.
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