Wimbledon lookahead: While Djokovic, Federer advance, others still stuck in first round

,General view of a Wimbledon weather vane, REUTERS/Toby Melville

LONDON – While Novak Djokovic – he of the 30-match Grand Slam winning streak – and Roger Federer can relax and enjoy their places in Wimbledon’s third round, there are more than two dozen players still stuck in the opening round.

That includes eight women who enter Thursday without having played a single point in the grass-court tournament thanks to plenty of rain, among them No. 11 Timea Bacsinszky and No. 31 Kristina Mladenovic.

While every man has at least started his first-round match, 12 head into Day 4 needing to complete those contests.

• More: Thursday's order of play

The top American man, 18th-seeded John Isner, has finished only one full set against Marcos Baghdatis, taking it in a tiebreaker. They are scheduled to resume Thursday – weather permitting, of course – with Baghdatis ahead 3-1 in the second.

Mikhail Youzhny and Horacio Zeballos are also in the second set of their first-round match.

And the list goes on and on.

In all, there are 28 players who are hoping to get out of the first round Thursday.

All of the wet weather wreaked so much havoc with the schedule that the first round of men’s doubles matches were reduced from best-of-five sets to best-of-three.

And the worst news of all? The long-range forecast shows there is a chance of rain every day through next Tuesday.

Here is what else to look for at Wimbledon on Thursday:

Murray’s turn

No. 1 Djokovic and No. 3 Federer got to enjoy the protection of the Centre Court roof Wednesday and completed their matches while there was under two hours of play elsewhere on the grounds. No. 2 Andy Murray gets the same treatment Thursday. He’ll be playing his second-round match against 76th-ranked Yen-hsun Lu of Taiwan. Murray has lost only one match at any Grand Slam tournament to a player ranked that low, and it was more than a decade ago, against No. 91 Arnaud Clement at the 2005 U.S. Open.

Williams sisters

Serena and Venus Williams are scheduled to play doubles Thursday, part of their reunion tour this season before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. In singles, though, six-time Wimbledon champion Serena gets the day off, while five-time champ Venus, who is seeded No. 8, takes on 115th-ranked Maria Sakkari in a second-round match. Sakkari will be trying to become the first Greek woman to reach the third round at a major since Eleni Daniilidou at Wimbledon in 2005.

Bouchard v Konta

Two women who closed out rain-interrupted first-round victories Wednesday are back in action when No. 16 Johanna Konta – the first British woman seeded at the All England Club since Jo Durie in 1984 – faces 2014 Wimbledon runner-up Eugenie Bouchard.

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