Historic Week...

It may seem small but just remember this week as the first time Wimbledon's Centre Court roof was used during the tennis major. The historic event occured during the match involving Dinara Safina and Amelie Mauresmo on June 29th.

I don't think the match itself is significant, but if you want to make some cheap money the official first Wimbledon use is to me interesting. You see while the roof was fully closed on June 29th, the first real usage was on June 24th where court officials were asked to move the roof in some 5ft or so to cool the royal VIP section.

To tide you over here are some interesting facts about the roof....

- The roof takes 10 minutes to close. - It is 16 metres above the court surface. - The maximum time before play can start or continue after the roof is closed and the internal environment stabilised is 30 minutes. - 43 miles per hour - the wind speed up to which the roof can be deployed/retracted. - The span of the moving roof trusses is 77 metres. - The weight of each of the 10 trusses is 100 tonnes. - 1,200 extra seats have been installed. - The combined weight of the roof is 3,000 tonnes. - It would take 7,500 Wimbledon umbrellas to cover the same area as the roof. - 290 million tennis balls could fit in Centre Court with the roof closed.

thanks to the UK mirror for that. If you want to know more about the roof you can also check out this article.

US News article on how roof works.

Finally here are my predictions. Venus takes the all time series lead by one over sister Serena. 6-3 6-4. Federer also sets the record for singles major victories with another win over Rodick. 6-4 6-3 6-4