This year Wimbledon had some surprises, and a historic moment.

To start things off, Roger Federer won a very tough 5 set match against Rafael Nadal 7-6 (7), 4-6, 7-6 (3), 2-6, 6-2. This victory gave Federer 5 Wimbledon championships in a row! Wow, I didn’t really think anyone would ever tie Bjorn Borg’s record of winning 5 straight Wimbledons. Pretty amazing.

On the woman’s side, Venus Williams was the lowest ranked woman to win a Wimbledon championship. Venus defeated Marion Bartoli of France 6-4, 6-1. This was also Williams’ fourth championship victory at Wimbledon.

Both Venus and Roger are young enough to win quite a few more titles at Wimbeldon. It will be interesting to see if they do.

For a more detailed look at Wimbeldon, check out the All-England Club’s Wimbeldon.org website.

Congratulations to Lindsay Davenport and husband, Jonathan Leach who are expecting a baby in the summer.

Lindsay Davenport has accomplished a lot in women’s tennis.

She finished the 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2005 seasons as the number 1 ranked woman singles player in the world.

She won the following majors:

U.S. Open womens singles – 1998
Wimbledon womens singles – 1999
Australian Open womens singles – 2000

She won the Olympic gold medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Over her carreer she has won 51 womens singles titles, and 36 women’s doubles titles. No word on her future plans now that she is pregnant.

Martina Navratilova won the the $1.34 million Rogers Cup doubles title on Monday. It was her 176th WTA doubles title. Pretty amazing. Martina and her partner Nadia Petrova defeated Cara Black and Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6-1, 6-2.

Pretty amazing for a 49 year old. Martina turns 50 on October 18th and has announced she will retiring after the US Open this year.

While doubles is a much easier game to play than singles, it is still pretty amazing that Martina is still one of the best womens doubles player in the world.

Yesterday at Wimbeldon the longest men’s double match in Wimbeldon history was played. Mark Knowles (Bahamas) and Daniel Nestor (Canada) beat Simon Aspelin (Sweden) and Todd Perry (Australia) 5-7, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 23-21 in an amazing match that took 6 hours, and 9 minutes!

It is the longest doubles match at any Grand Slam tournament and the longest match period at Wimbeldon. It was played in two days time, because it go too dark Tuesday night to keep playing.

What an amazing match. I used to love watching long matches like that. I also used to love playing in matches like that. I am not sure why, but I think it’s because I found it challenging. One time when my brother and I were younger we played an 8+ hour long street tag football game, now that was fun!

I just wanted to let you know that I found this excellent blog covering the 2006 Wimbledon Tennis Tournament. It is run by someone from London, who is giving great information on Wimbeldon and London.

Check out it by clicking here. I am going to subscribe to it’s RSS feed, because I expect it will be a great way to keep up with Wimbeldon.

Tags:
wimbledon 2006 Wimbledon

Here are the final results for the 2006 Nasdaq-100 Open from Key Biscayne Florida:

Men’s Final: Federer Beats Ljubicic 7-6(5), 7-6(4), 7-6(6) (Second Consecutive Nasdaq-100 Open for Federer)

Women’s Final: (12) Kuznetsova Beats (4) Sharapova 6-4, 6-3

Men’s Doubles Final: (2) Bjorkman/Mirnyi Defeat (1) Bryan/Bryan 6-4, 6-4

Women’s Doubles Final: (1) Raymond/Stosur Defeat (7) Navratilova/Huber 6-4, 7-5

Women’s tennis star Maria Sharapova will be taking on tenth seeded compatriot Anastasia Myskina in the quarterfinals of the NASDAQ-100 Open. You can read more about this interesting match-up here.

The NASDAQ-100 Open is played in Key Biscane Florida every year and is great to go watch in person. My brother and I lived in South Florida most of our lives and we used to go down to Key Biscane and see this event every year. It used to be called the Lipton Tennis tournament, but is now named the NASDAQ-100 Open. It is a one of the few events outside of the grand slams that both men and women compete in. It’s a very popular event for the players, second only to the grand slam events.

James Blake is an inspiration. He’s been through a lot, and he’s come back to be a serious contender in tennis.

But being an inspiration isn’t enough to beat Roger Federer. An article published earlier this week about their matchup last weekend was a really good read. It was particularly gratifying to know that Roger Federer is not only a great tennis player but a really good human being, as well.

Starting on March 22 at the Nasdaq-100 Open in Key Biscayne, Florida, professional tennis will utilize instant replay. The U.S. Open will be the first Grand Slam event where it will be used. It was already used at a tournament in Australia in December. Is this good for tennis? Is it bad for tennis?

It’s really hard to say. I know that for other professional sports, when the instant replay machine overturns a call in favor of my favorite team, I’m pretty happy with it. When it overturns a call that I was happy with, not so much…

Players will get the opportunity to review two calls per set, plus extra opportunities for tie breakers.