The British weather put paid to much of the day's play at Wimbledon today, with play not getting underway on outside courts for more than a few minutes until late afternoon. Two ATP matches were cancelled due to the weather - Stan Wawrinka and Denis Istomin will have to wait to play their third round tie, as will Feliciano Lopez and John Isner. Centre Court matches still went ahead though - thank god for the roof! - as did some other matches towards the start of the schedule. Here's what happened in those.
Rafael Nadal opened up play on Centre Court today, facing Mikhail Kukushkin. For the third match in a row, he dropped the first set. Kukushkin fired 17 winners past the world number one, and there were no break points for either player for the duration of the 56-minute set, Kukushkin taking it in a tiebreak. From there, Nadal didn't look back, winning the next three sets for the loss of just three games, while winning an astonishing 55% of points on his opponents serve. The final scoreline - 6-7 6-1 6-1 6-1.
Roger Federer had another lightening-quick win today, disposing of Santiago Giraldo in just 81 minutes, 6-3 6-1 6-3. Federer's serve remained unbroken throughout the match, while he broke his opponent five times in total. Such a quick win - Federer is yet to drop a set - will help him conserve energy for the tougher matches that will undoubtably lie ahead. He'll next play Tommy Robredo, who beat him at the US Open last year.
Milos Raonic was another player to have a quick win, in one hour and 46 minutes. He hit an astonishing 30 aces and no double faults, and 50 winners against just six unforced errors. One slight area of concern for him may be his returning - he didn't engineer a break point on his opponent's serve until the third set, taking the first two on tiebreaks, before breaking twice in the third set as Kubot's serve percentage dropped to 52%. He'll face the winner of Nishikori and Bolleli next, and on this form can be confident of going further.
Nick Kyrgios continued to impress today with a win over fellow young prospect Jiri Vesely. Kyrgios won 3-6 6-3 7-5 6-2 to, rather impressively, reach the second week in his Wimbledon debut. The young Australian hit 26 aces and 63 winners, and will next face Nadal for a place in the quarterfinals.
Tommy Robredo overcame last year's semifinalist Jerzy Janowicz in a tough five-set match. The Spaniard took the first two sets 6-2 6-4 before Janowicz staged a comeback, winning the third set in a tiebreak and the fourth 6-4 before eventually going down 6-3 in the fifth. Despite the disappointment of not matching his result from last year, this has to count as a decent result for the Pole, who's had a tough year, and is projected to drop out of the top 50 when the rankings are next updated.
The match between Kei Nishikori and Simone Bolelli was suspended due to darkness at 3-3 in the final set. This is an ultra-tight match that Nishikori would perhaps have been expected to win more easily. It will conclude on Monday.
There's no play on Sunday at Wimbledon, but the players will return on Monday for the business end of the tournament - we're approaching the final stages.