Wimbledon

Adam had a trip to Uganda for a couple of weeks for work. I'll leave it to him to post photos and write something (don't hold your breath - he has come back to work as well as his summer teaching).

But while he was away, I got to go to Wimbledon. We had tickets for the first wednesday. I thought it would just be a case of mentioning I had a spare ticket for Wimbledon and people would be queueing up to come with me (the tickets were for court one, we got them by ballot we which applied for in December), but everyone either was out of holidays or too busy at work. Luckily Kali convinced our boss to let her have the day off to accompany me.

Wimbledon has three courts with organised seating, and then 10 or so general courts. We had hoped to see a bit of Leyton Hewitt and Serena Willams who were both playing on court 2 which had come general access area, but the queues to get in were a bit much when we had lovely seats waiting for us on court 1. We did manage to see some of Aussie Sam Stosur, but again the crowds were a bit much.

A warm up on the outside courts.



So we got our pints of pimms and were shown to our seats by some charming servicemen, and settled in for our first match - Ana Ivanovic (the top seeded woman) vs Natalie Dechy. Apparently it was supposed to be quite cut and dried, but no one told Dechy, so we had a three and a half hour thriller. I had to nip out to stretch my legs and get strawberries in cream at the beginning of the third set.

The servicemen who show everyone to their seats.


Court 1


Ivanovic


The excitement of the challenge!


Dechy serving at 7-8 in the tie break in the third set (it finished 10 - 8 to Ivanovic)


We had a bit of a wander around before the mens matches started - we got to see Navratilova playing in the doubles. But then we wandered back into the empty court 1 to see the whole extra level that is men's tennis with 130 mph serves with Baghdatis v Johansson (6-6,6-4,6-4) followed by Ferrer v Andreev (3-6,6-3,6-4,6-2).

Baghdatis


After another pimms and a white wine I started to find the 7 ft ball boy a bit ridiculous, and the general solemnity of the ball boys with their ball changes and formal swapping over routines all a bit much. It did seem that the younger ball boys were sent to bed around about 6pm. The grunting was also quite hilarious. The women grunted only on significant points - if it was to intimidate it wouldn't have had much effect as they were each grunting as much as the other. The men grunted more, but it somewhat added to my giggling fit that Andreev seemed to grunt 'beer'.

Linesmen on duty


The 7 ft ball boy.