Wimbledon 2013: Patterns of play – By: Edward Billett

Written by: Staff on 9th July 2013

Wimbledon 2013: Patterns of play - By: Edward Billett

epa03779747 Andy Murray of Britain with the championship trophy after defeating Novak Djokovic of Serbia in the men's final for the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, in London, Britain, 07 July 2013. EPA/KERIM OKTEN |

The 2013 Wimbledon Championships were remarkable for many reasons. From a British tennis perspective, the final day was one of the greatest in living memory, with Andy Murray becoming the first British man to win the title in 77 years. From a neutral perspective, however, the Championships also delivered: this year’s tournament saw a contender for match of the year in Djokovic and Del Potro’s 4 hour 45 minute epic, the longest ever Wimbledon semifinal, whilst fantastic matches were also seen on the women’s side of the competition, such as Lisicki and Radwankska’s momentum-shifting last four encounter.

The brilliance of this year’s Wimbledon, however, lies not only in the excellence of its matches, or even the fairytale ending for Murray and the hordes of British tennis fans supporting him, but in the ease to which this particular tournament relates to a fundamentally human trait: the nature to look for patterns.

The human desire to detect patterns (often despite there being no pattern at all) is evidenced continually in every day life. Everything from buying a particularly stylized piece of clothing, to predicting the fluctuations of the stock market involves an engagement with patterns on a fundamental level. Sport viewing is no different, and the brilliance of Wimbledon 2013 comes from the fact that it both satisfies and disrupts this human condition of pattern seeking.

In the early rounds we saw huge disruptions in the order of things with regards to the seedings on both sides of the competition. By the end of the first week, both the 2nd and 3rd womens’ seeds, Azarenka and Sharapova, were out, and we also witnessed the exit of both the 10th and 12th seeds, Kirilenko and Ivanovic, at the hands of two rising stars of the women’s game, friends Laura Robson and Eugenie Bouchard respectively.

Almost certainly the biggest disruption in patterns, however, came from the men’s side of the competition, with the losses of both Federer and Nadal by the 3rd day of the tournament – ending Federer’s run of 36 consecutive quarterfinal appearances at the Majors, and Nadal’s streak of reaching the final of every tournament into which he has entered since his return to the tour. While the absence of both Federer and Nadal in the second week of a major is a remarkable shock in itself, the disruption of this pattern also paves the way for a new trend to be recognized, specifically the rise of the Djokovic-Murray duopoly.

Patterns of the rise and fall of those at the top of the game bear striking resemblance to those currently in motion in other sporting hierarchies – just as Barcelona and Real Madrid, the once dominant Spanish giants of world football were seemingly deposed this year by their German counterparts from the Bundesliga (Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund), so too is a similar pattern becoming apparent at the pinnacle of men’s tennis. A sport once dominated by Federer and Nadal has seen the now world number 1 and 2, Djokovic and Murray, contest 3 of the last 4 Grand Slam finals, each encounter displaying a new kind of brutal, defensively grounded tennis.

Perhaps the most pleasing patterns of all to come to light during the 2013 Championships, though, is in the victory of Andy Murray. It’s pleasing not simply because it provided the ending millions of British tennis fans had been yearning for after decades of waiting, but because the man who had suffered his toughest defeat 12 months ago to Federer on the very same court was able to rebound in spectacular fashion by winning the title a year on in emphatic fashion – deservedly becoming the first British man to lift the Wimbledon trophy in 77 years.

Edward Billett

Topics: Andy Murray, British tennis news, Edward Billett, Juan Martin Del Potro, Novak Djokovic, Radwankska, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Sabine Lisicki, Sports, Tennis, Tennis News, Wimbledon Championships