Defeat no disaster, Kyle will be top 10

IHAVE been very impressed by Kyle Edmund this week and there are no negatives for me. The bottom line is he was playing Novak Djokovic, one of the greats of all time.

He is a work in progress but he has made a tremendous improvement. He looks like a top 20 player and I am very confident he’s going to be top ten. He was great in the first set but gradually the pressure that Djokovic was putting on him became too much. It is good the way Edmund has improved but he is not the finished article by any means. This may have been the biggest test of his career, and its not like he failed it. The other guy was just too good. But he has just got to keep on the improvement. The forehand is huge but he has to improve his defensive skills, his movement, his shot selection at times.

His improvement on grass this season has been fantastic. It is his weakest surface in a lot of ways and I think he found it difficult to adjust to those quick movements and the

IT ALMOST feels like Roger Federer is naked without his Nike clothes on. He has signed a ten-year deal with Uniqlo — and Rafael Nadal’s agent should be sending Roger’s a bottle of champagne because whenever Nadal’s Nike contract runs out he’s going to be in a great bargaining position — Nike can’t afford to lose both of them. low bounce. I think he will look at this at the end of the week and think this is not a surface he has to fear any more and there’s no reason why he can’t come back and do better on it. He’s a good studier and has a good team around him.

He has more respect in the locker room. There is an aura about him that he belongs.

As for Djokovic, he will be very pleased with his business this week. This was a big barometer for him against Edmund and his big weapons and the British crowd.

But I don’t know yet whether he really wants it, whether he is ready to go back to the trenches to get back to No1. He has got to build a lot of wins to get back to that level.

This leaves us with no British singles players in the second week but I don’t think that is anything to worry about. It has just been a weird year. Andy Murray would normally be in the second week, Jo Konta was disappointing and Edmund couldn’t have got a worse draw.

But we’ve got plenty coming through with Cameron Norrie, who is making a big splash, and Jay Clarke. And in the women’s we’ve got a lot coming through. So I don’t think it has been a disappointing Wimbledon for British players.