Notes on watching the first round of Wimbledon on TV (Ivanovic v Hradecká)

A few things struck me.

One of the best features of DirecTV for the avid sports fan is the Mix Feature on channel 701, which offers a 3 x 2 = 6-box grid view (above) of live simultaneous matches in major tennis and golf championships.

Yesterday among the six was the Ana Ivanovic v Lucie Hradecká match, telecast simultaneusly on ESPN2 (channel 209) and 704.

I moved the grid cursor over to 704 and was watching quite contentedly when the penny dropped: wait a minute, sez I to myself, isn't ESPN2's hi-def usually better than the picture on one of the 700-range channels?

I clicked over to 209HD and there was the very same match, but in the still-startling-to-me-after-watching-it-for-a-year-and-a-half brilliant clarity and crispness of HDTV at its best instead of the HDTV broadcast on 704.

There's some secret sauce ESPN2's adding to its video feed, after all the very same one as that on 704.

The sound is so much better with HDTV, such that you hear court mutterings and groans and the ball hitting the racket far more clearly.

The only negative about making the switch to ESPN2 was that I had to listen to the American broadcasting team instead of the much more informative and appealing British crew featuring Virginia Wade as analyst.

Win some, lose some.

The second thing that registered was the dinky court on which Ivanovic and Hradecká were having it out.

I mean, wasn't it just a year ago that Ivanovic bestrode the tennis world like a colossus, ranked #1?

Sure, her game went south in a hurry once she lost the ability to toss the ball properly for her serve, but that court was, at least from an aerial view, the smallest one in the Wimbledon complex.

There were maybe several hundred, perhaps a thousand, people watching live around the low boundaries in the few seats available.

Strange.

Finally, it's way past time for Wimbledon to start using Hawk-Eye for line calls in all matches, not just those on Centre Court and Court 1.

There were a zillion disputes in the Ivanovic match alone, none of which could be convincingly resolved since the rinky-dink court they were playing on didn't have Hawk-Eye.

The New York Times picked up on the problem in a story that went up yesterday.

Sure, Wimbledon's traditional and all but jeez, didn't they finally give in and build a retractable roof over Centre Court — at a cost of £80 million ($131 million) — to avoid the predictable rainouts?

If they can do that they can start using electronic line calls for every match.