Wimbledon Day 5

The amazing drama of this year's Wimbledon continued today, though there were not any especially noteworthy upsets. John Isner lost to Thiemo De Bakker, in a result that surprised absolutely no one. Credit to De Bakker for being able to keep up his solid play in an odd situation, and also to Isner for not retiring for not retiring when it was clear he was unable to produce a competitive match.

On the other hand, Romanian Victor Hanescu, who was playing on the now-famed court 18, caused a different kind of stir when he retired down 3-0 in the fifth set after getting into it with the crowd, and allegedly spitting at some rowdy fans and deliberately faulting away his last service game. I'm not sure exactly what the story is with that, but it's certainly odd.

The only other upset of note was Paul-Henri Mathieu over Mikhail Youzhny, in another five set match. Mathieu got a lucky net cord winner on break point in the fourth set, but before that, Youzhny looked to be on top of the match. Apparently, he couldn't recover from that disappointment and ended up losing the match.

The other top players had relatively little trouble: Federer and Djokovic won their matches with more ease than they had demonstrated yet during these championships. Hewitt beat Gael Monfils in three sets, while Melzer and Roddick won their matches in four. The women made it through with no trouble at all; all eight of the matches that took place today were completed in straight sets, and the only upsets were Henin over Petrova and Zonvareva over Wickmayer.

Looking ahead to tomorrow's action, it looks like the first Saturday might actually be fairly straight forward. It's tough to see any big upsets in the cards when you have Nadal facing Petzschner, Murray facing Simon, Soderling facing Bellucci, Tsonga facing Kamke, and Querrey facing Malisse. Querrey is probably in the most danger of the top players, while the more interesting matches feature lower-ranked players. Fognini plays Benneteau and Mathieu plays De Bakker, which could each go either way. Ferrer v. Chardy could actually be the closest match on offer tomorrow, but just because of the surface.

Still, I anticipate relatively easy wins for the higher-ranked players in most if not all of these matches, which will set us up for some stunning fourth round contests on Wimbledon's super monday.

On the women's side, the story is much the same. The higher-ranked players need to get through their matches tomorrow, which do not promise a great deal of drama, to set up the good match-ups on Monday. I expect Serena, Wozniacki, Radwanska, Sharapova, Pennetta, Li Na, and Azarenka to win tomorrow - or at least most of them. While there will probably be an upset or two, no single match looks particularly ripe for one.

We'll wrap the most amazing first week of a grand slam in recent memory, and then see how things proceed in the second.