The four top men’s seeds will congregate over the next two days with Grigor Dimitrov shuffling up beside them to make up the numbers and add a less familiar face to a predictable cast of characters, as if it were a police line-up.
The 23-year-old Bulgarian is poised to meet Britain's Andy Murray in the quarterfinal, should the two come through their fourth-round matches, and he will be seen as the possible villain of this week's piece.
But the defending champion is finely grooved and brings numbers with him to show his readiness for his meeting with the 6’8’’ Kevin Anderson.
He has spent 302 minutes on court for his first three matches, the fastest he has ever shot through the draw in nine visits. Anderson has spent 556 minutes, almost twice as long labouring on court.
Today’s match on Centre Court will demand more patience from Murray and serves will be flying past but moving a carcass like that of the South African around court comes not without hazard.
It would also be misplaced to frame Anderson as an entirely one-dimensional player. He is not an Ivo Karovic or John Isner and Murray over the weekend conceded that “he is probably better [than both] from the back of the court”.
Still the defending champion will watch a crazy number of balls sail past, suck it up maybe for 11 games and wait for opportunity. Despite the speed of Murray’s advance, hanging in and being dogged is also one of his virtues and that could be called on to take him through to 11 seed Dimitrov, who faces Argentina’s Leonardo Mayer.
“I don’t really look back and compare,” said Murray of his first seven days and of last year’s historic win.
Unbeaten
The champion hasn't been beaten in Wimbledon since before the 2012 Olympics.
“There are different opponents and some matches are just going to be longer. It’s been one of the best starts I have had here, that’s for sure.”
Top seed Novak Djokovic takes on Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the pick of the ties for neutrals with the Serb hoping to extend his 10-match winning streak against the Frenchman.
Tsonga, streaky and sometimes moodily brilliant, will be determined to improve upon his performance in their most recent meeting at the same stage at Roland Garros, when he won just six games.
Djokovic, who also plays today, has looked intermittently vulnerable, sometimes flickering in matches where he should be fully commanding.
His heavy fall in the last round may be of some import as players are forever looking for marginal percentage gains or losses.
We may never know the real extent of the injury to his shoulder although he has said it is fine. The top seed and 2011 Wimbledon champion is bidding to reach the quarterfinals for the 21st straight Grand Slam.
Seven-time Wimbledon winner Roger Federer, looking for his 18th Grand Slam, may have revenge on his mind when he faces Spaniard Tommy Robredo in the battle of the 32-year-olds.
Federer lost their most recent Grand Slam meeting in straight sets at the 2013 US Open. But history gathers around for the quietly proceeding, almost flawless Federer in this meeting as the defeat in New York last year was only his second in the pair’s 12 previous exchanges.
Federer’s force
As with Murray, numbers from the first week are supporting the Swiss player, who has dropped only 23 games in the first three rounds, the least he has conceded for 10 years.
Rafa Nadal, another routine suspect in the line-up and seeded two has had both the best and worst of times. When on top of his game Nadal has played like he did last time he reached the quarter finals here in 2011 but not without coughing up early sets.
His advantage so far has been that lower ranked players Mikhail Kukushkin (63), Lukas Rosol (52) and Martin Kilzan (51) have burned brightly then died under the suffocating weight of his power.
In 19-year-old Australian Nick Kyrgios, the Spaniard has also drawn the attention of the Fanatics. Created in 1997 as a travelling fan club for Lleyton Hewitt, it is now a ‘sport and party tour company’ with a membership of 50,000.
Dressed in Aussie yellow they sit in blocks at various sports events and Kyrgios, who comes from a Greek father and Malaysian mother, is today’s object of attention.
The wildcard entry is bidding to become the first teenager to defeat a world number one at a Grand Slam since Nadal achieved the feat when he defeated Federer at 2005 Roland Garros aged 19.
Federer flew Kyrgios to Switzerland before this year’s French Open for practice but it is the ever-thoughtful seed who might benefit more from that meeting. Murray also name-checked him as the “next big Aussie star.”
The problem is that the big-serving player, who is sometimes impatiently violent with his ground strokes, saved nine match points on his way past 13th seed Richard Gasquet. By anyone’s accounting after nine lives you don’t want to be drawing from that well again. Is Kyrgios all lucked out?
