The one with the Championships

For those reading this who don’t know (as you have been living under a rock on Mars) I live in Wimbledon. It is very well known (possibly not to Australians) by its postcode: SW19. The papers use that more than its name I guess because it is smaller to print which brings me to when they use it the most - The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club Championships. Back home we just refer it as Wimbledon but being the local now I have gotten well into the lingo. It was the girl’s birthday so we took the day off to go and spend it in the sun watching sport.

To get tickets to the tennis there are probably 6 options to go about it. Firstly they have a ballet in December the year before where you can obtain them. You can buy a corporate section for an astronomical amount. Date a tennis player to get into their box. Grab some tickets off a scalper (although there didn’t appear to be any outside as it was well patrolled). What most people do is actually sleep outside the venue overnight to get the tickets. The final option (and possibly the best) was to log onto ticketmaster at 8.30 the night before and grab them that way. It is apparent that nobody over here knows this option because everyone I have met are amazed I had gotten tickets. We got centrecourt seats, had a good night sleep / slept in and promptly turned up to the gate around midday to get straight in.

Once we arrived we grabbed some drinks – Pints of Pimm’s that cost 6 squidies each. I felt it was a massive ripoff but we were at the tennis with a bunch of snobs – and I was rather parched. Anyway we headed to centrecourt to see the first match – Federer vs Hewitt. Was rather lucky we got to see the little Aussie scamp (or knobhead as some of you may refer to him) but also the number one player in the world. The first set was a cracker – with Hewitt going down in a tie break. It was enough to get the Fanatics really excited and the Aussie chants were flowing. I don’t think we saw any emotion (or a clap) from Bec except a couple of squeaky “C’mon Lleyton!” I was wondering if she felt duped into marrying a former #1 who is well out of his prime and now has to suffer a couple of early round victories before defeat before the quarters. Perhaps she could cling to the fact that Hewitt was actually the last player to win Wimbledon before Federer’s streak commenced but I doubt it.

So onto the second and third sets. They were over quicker than I could type that sentence. It didn’t stop the Aussie chants – even after Hewitt had cleared off to the dressing room.

So we departed from centrecourt to grab some more gold laced Pimm’s and headed to ‘the hill’ to relax in the sun. We watched Nadal on the big screen demolish his opponent and I said at the time he might go all the way this year (he just appeared to have a bit more determination than Federer but I was thinking to attribute this to the fact that Federer was playing Hewitt). The hill wasn’t all that interesting. A massive crowd of people watching a game on the big screen. The fact that it was a sunny 28 degrees increased the atmosphere but I was reluctant to feel the worth of spending a bit of money on tickets to get into SW19 to over pay for drinks and watch it on TV. I was very glad to have seats. After a while we left the plebs to grab a bite to eat and return to our seats on centrecourt. The women’s game was finishing up and I had taken less than zero amount of interest in the female draw since Sharapova was felled the previous week.

The final game was between a plucky Frenchman against “the future of British tennis” as he is referred to here when he is winning, Andy Murray (he is actually a Scot). The first 2 and a half sets presented the Brit with a massive touch up and I figured to be home at an early hour. Finally towards the back end of the 3rd set, the Brit showed some fight and came from down match point to steal it. Game on. I think the Brit had gone to the “Hewitt school of motivation” because he had a little scream at every point he won and was trying very hard to get the crowd involved.

I won’t bore anyone with details but it was a pretty exciting match from this point and four and a half hours later the Brit won over the Frenchy. The circumstances were a little controversial as the light was very poor when the Brit was serving for the match – but the crowd (except me) got what it wanted and the Brit moved on to face Nadal. If you didn’t know Nadal beat the Scot (following the papers lead he is referred to as a Scot after he loses – I kid you not) in game more one sided than a Zimbabwe election.

I was very thankful for the awesome weather we had and rated the day highly. We were rather fortunate to get some good matches as well which probably made the difference. The only thing I will be changing next year is 1. Make sure I see Sharapova and 2. Sneak in some booze.