My Mum and I supported Nadal from the very early days.
Federer is brilliant but boring like Borg and Becker were.

My favourite ever was Ivanisovic and his win in 2001 made an awful year for me slightly better.

I seem to love the East Europeans - they play with passion. I like tall Ancic.

Actually I hope a new hero (or heroine) might emerge this year - in general I tend not to like women players and their squeaks and grunts; must be a biological thing. I loved Martina though but really liked her in person too.

I must say that the BBC advert is excellent, very well put together.
Henman Hill of course will never be the same.

I've said this before on the board - John McEnroe is so brilliant as a commentator that I used to fly to New York deliberately at the start of Wimbledon to catch him on NBC before he did it for the BBC.

McEnroe/Becker and Connors are all brilliant commentators for BBC and you take their opinions seriously because they were winners. In fact all of the other commentators like Virginia Wade, John Lloyd and Andrew Castle are all very good, in the latter case injury curtailed what would have been a promising career.

Predictions:-

Sharporov for the Ladies

Nadal for the Men

Murray will reach the quarter finals.

All the finals to be delayed by Rain.

... and Becker's english is much better than his german. Really! No Joke!

Have you noticed how Virginia Wade only refers to the women by their first name if she likes them, otherwise it's just surnames ?

Murray couldn't have picked a better draw for himself really. He should make the Quarter finals if the hype is to be believed. It might depend on how fit former semi finalist Xavier Malisse is.

One nice touch. I read an article on Fabrice Santoro last week, who now holds the records for the most grand slams played by a male player. His one remaining ambition was to play a match on the centre court. Looks like he may have got his wish.

Watching Mario Ancic (I love very tall tennis players - when they play well, which Mario isn't at the moment, they are so graceful and balletic), I'm wondering as I do every year, why these tiny East European states like Croatia do so well in training their kids and I remember Eurovision and Euro2008 and think the answer lies in the phrase - because they care.

world number 4 Russian, Svetlana Kuznetsova said

"In the UK, they give everything to the first kid who can hit the ball over the net twice, in Russia they give you nothing"

Look at Alex Bogdanovic, 7 wildcards into Wimbledon, still never won a match. Ranked 278 in the world. Hopeless !