Day 3, Wimbledon: In One Year, Out the Other

People look at Wimbledon and marvel at the predictability of the finals. Rarely does an unseeded player win the tournament. In recent memory, there have been two examples: Boris Becker, who won Wimbledon in his second tournament ever (he won Queen's), and Goran Ivanisevic who won as a wildcard, but clearly was capable of producing a big game on the grass.
Even if the finals have produced three consecutive meetings between the game's best two players, the others who make it far are often a bit surprising.

Let's wind the clock back a year and revisit last year's quarterfinalist. The two that were expected to be there, Federer and Nadal, were there. Andy Murray was just starting to take that next step forward having won a five setter against a solid grass court player in Richard Gasquet. The other five quarterfinalists were: Feliciano Lopez, Marat Safin, Arnaud Clement, Rainer Scheuttler, and Mario Ancic.

Mario Ancic got injured, so he didn't even make Wimbledon this year. Feliciano Lopez fell in five sets to Karol Beck, a lucky loser, in the first round. Marat Safin, given a 14th seed primarily on the basis of his semifinal appearance last year, went out tamely to Federer practice partner, Jesse Levine in four sets, in the first round. Arnaud Clement lost in the first round to Juan Martin del Potro in three easy sets. Indeed, both Clement and Lopez suffered due to Nadal's withdrawal (though Clement would have faced Nadal otherwise, so he'd probably take his chances with del Potro). Rainer Scheuttler was the only one to make it to the second round, and he lost in straight sets to Dudi Sela of Israel.

What this means is a much different looking quarterfinals. Some familiar faces are hoping to make it that far including Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic.