Tuesday, 7:01 a.m. ET: ESPN officially devotes a 30-minute block to talk and previews from 6:30 to 7. All the TV schedule guides for Wimbledon indicated that from 7 a.m. onward, ESPN’s coverage block for live tennis would begin. Yet, on this Tuesday morning, ESPN airs more anchor-desk talk for quite some time. This becomes a relatively normal procedure for much of the week.
Despite the beginning of live tennis just after 6:30 a.m. Eastern time (11:30 a.m. in suburban London on the grounds of the All-England Club), ESPN regularly stuck with studio analysis and commentary, plus features and other content, well past 7 a.m. on most days during week one. ESPN’s time block for live tennis is supposed to begin at 7 Eastern, but the network generally didn’t start to cover live tennis in earnest until 7:30 or thereabouts over the course of the week.
Tuesday, 7:33 a.m. ET: Only now, after a second half-hour of talk, does ESPN switch from gabbing to live tennis.
7:47 a.m. ET: Having shown the end of the second set of the match between Stan Wawrinka and Joao Sousa, ESPN quickly shifts to the end of the second set of the match between Kenny De Schepper and Kei Nishikori, with Nishikori serving at 5-6.
7:59 a.m. ET: Nishikori wins the second set. ESPN switches to a match between Andrea Petkovic and Katarzyna Piter, with Petkovic two points from the match at 5-4, 30-30, in the second set.
8:09 a.m. ET: After Petkovic wins, ESPN switches to the conclusion of a suspended match (from Monday) between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Jurgen Melzer, with Tsonga serving for the match at 5-4 in the fifth set.
8:17 a.m. ET: Tsonga wins. ESPN switches to the second-set tiebreaker in a match between Lleyton Hewitt and Michal Przysiezny.
9:20 a.m. ET: ESPN shows a blowout, with Roger Federer leading Paolo Lorenzi, 6-1, 4-1. Meanwhile, Lleyton Hewitt’s match moves to the fourth set at 3-2 against Przyziesny. Richard Gasquet and James Duckworth begin the second set of a relatively close match (Duckworth won the first set, 7-6). Hewitt and Gasquet are both playing on TV courts, just to be clear.
9:30 a.m. ET: ESPN sets up Rafael Nadal’s match against Martin Klizan, clearly opting for superstar-centric treatment of the day’s play during this period of time, rather than catching segments of matches available for TV coverage on non-show courts.
9:53 a.m. ET: ESPN shows Federer-Lorenzi with Federer leading by two sets and 5-2 in the third. Meanwhile, Nadal-Klizan is early in the first set, with the match in a crucial period (Nadal having just fended off a fourth break point to hold for 2-1).
10:04 a.m. ET: Federer’s match ends.
10:08 a.m. ET: After four minutes of showing Federer’s post-win reaction and talking about the match, ESPN then shows a BBC interview of Federer. All this is happening during the close first set of the Nadal-Klizan match, which was viewed as a competitive match in light of the fact that Nadal had failed to get past the second round in each of the past two Wimbledons, losing in the first round last year.
Sticking with a first-round Roger Federer blowout (6-1, 6-1, 6-3) while other, more compelling matches are going on? That’s the kind of superstar treatment major-tournament tennis does NOT need on TV — not during week one of a two-week event.
10:10 a.m. ET: ESPN finally gets back to Nadal-Klizan at 4-3 in the first.
11:59 a.m. ET: ESPNEWS, now covering matches with ESPN carrying the World Cup, misses almost all of the first three games of the fourth set of Nadal-Klizan, catching only the 40-15 point at 1-1. Nadal wins the point to take a 2-1 lead. ESPNEWS goes to commercial.
Approx. 3:05 p.m. ET: In a manner similar to the handling of the Federer match conclusion a few hours earlier, ESPNEWS sticks with the end of a match between Simona Halep and Teliana Pereira, with Halep leading by a set and 5-1 in the second set. A long game ensues, though, so ESPNEWS winds up staying with that match while Ana Ivanovic and Francesca Schiavone play in the middle of a much closer second set, with Ivanovic leading 4-2. At 3:10 p.m. ET, ESPNEWS comes back from the changeover at 5-2 Halep to show the end of that match while Ivanovic-Schiavone stands at 4-3 in the second.
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Wednesday, 7:50 a.m. ET: After showing Venus Williams win the first set of her match in a tiebreaker, ESPN goes to the end of the second set of the match between Ernests Gulbis and Sergiy Stakhovsky, with Stakhovsky leading 5-3 and Gulbis serving. Stakhovsky wins the set, 6-3. ESPN then shows match point of Li Na’s second-round win and goes back to the Venus match afterward.
8:28 a.m. ET: After Venus wins her match, ESPN goes to the end of the third set in Gulbis-Stakhovsky, with Gulbis serving at 4-5.
Approx. 8:35 a.m. ET: During a stretch of several minutes, ESPN focuses on the Gulbis-Stakhovsky tiebreaker but ducks in quick, well-timed live look-ins to first-set conclusions in matches involving Andy Murray and Agnieszka Radwanska. The timing of these switches is carried off with the precision one would expect from America’s foremost live-game sports broadcaster.
9:08 a.m. ET: With Murray leading the second set of his match by a 5-0 score, ESPN stays with the second set of his match instead of going to Court No. 2, a TV court, where Vera Zvonareva and Tara Moore are locked in an extended third set, with Zvonareva leading, 7-6 (no third-set tiebreaker at Wimbledon).
9:17 a.m. ET: With ESPN airing studio analysis and commentary, Zvonareva wins the match, 9-7 in the final set. Moreover, the result (again, on a TV court) comes and goes without even a taped highlight. Zvonareva, it’s worth mentioning, was a Wimbledon finalist in 2010.
Approx. 9:30 a.m. ET: ESPN switches from the Murray blowout and goes to the third-set tiebreaker between Jeremy Chardy and Marinko Matosevic.
10:09 a.m. ET: ESPN moves away from a lopsided match between Grigor Dimitrov and Luke Saville to show the end of the fourth set of Chardy-Matosevic, with Matosevic serving at 5-4.
10:28 a.m. ET: ESPN shifts from the lopsided Dimitrov-Saville match (two sets to love) and moves to the third-set tiebreaker between Tim Puetz and Fabio Fognini.
10:58 a.m. ET: ESPN goes to the conclusion of the Chardy-Matosevic match at 6-5 in the fifth set. Chardy finishes the match by breaking Matosevic’s serve and winning the final set, 7-5.
Approx. 11:05 a.m. ET: ESPN catches the end of the Puetz-Fognini match with Fognini up 4-2 in the fourth set and leading two sets to one.
11:36 a.m. ET: ESPNEWS, on the air at 11:30, switches from the Novak-Djokovic-Radek Stepanek match (3-2 in the first set) to the match between Bernard Tomic and Tomas Berdych, with Tomic leading 5-3 in the first.
12:11 p.m. ET: After showing the conclusion of the first set between Victoria Azarenka and Bojana Jovanovski, ESPNEWS moves to the conclusion of the second set of the Berdych-Tomic match. (Berdych is up, 5-4, with Tomic serving.)
12:42 p.m. ET: Azarenka goes up 5-2 in the second set of her match after losing the first set. ESPNEWS goes to commercial instead of showing David Ferrer serving at 2-4 in the fifth set against Andrey Kuznetsov.
12:45 p.m. ET: ESPNEWS gets to Kuznetsov-Ferrer at 5-2, 30-love. Kuznetsov wins the match in under 30 seconds.
12:53 p.m. ET: ESPNEWS, with Azarenka and Jovanovski just starting the third set of their match, goes to the third set of Berdych-Tomic, tied at 3-3 in a match that’s one set apiece.
12:56 p.m. ET: Coming back from commercial, ESPNEWS goes to the third set of the Djokovic-Stepanek match, in which Djokovic leads two sets to love, abandoning both the late-third-set portion of Berdych-Tomic (a match tied at one set apiece) and the final set of Azarenka-Jovanovski.
1:09 p.m. ET: ESPNEWS gets to the Berdych-Tomic third set with Berdych facing set point for Tomic, serving at 5-6, 15-40. ESPNEWS stayed with Djokovic-Stepanek through the seventh game of the third set, with both players on serve and Djokovic leading by two sets. A reminder: Berdych and Tomic split the first two sets, making their third set that much more critical when compared to Djokovic-Stepanek.
1:20 p.m. ET: After Berdych wins the third set in a tiebreaker, ESPNEWS goes to the Azarenka-Jovanovski match, with Jovanovski leading 4-3 in the third.
1:30 p.m. ET: Azarenka holds to bring the third set of her match to 5-5. ESPNEWS moves to the third-set tiebreaker between Djokovic and Stepanek (2-1, Stepanek).
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