This Monday I was lucky enough to visit the hallowed grounds of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. That's Wimbledon to you and me.
I'm thinking it would've been good to make a note of absolutely anything and everything I saw but, partly because it would've been a bit silly to make notes and partly because I didn't have a pen, I didn't. So instead you'll be getting an incoherent rambling of the day's events.
Before that, a quick word on Eastbourne. It's the fifth year in a row I've been to the tournament and it very rarely disappoints. This year was no different, although I would've loved to have seen Victoria Azarenka win in the women's final. Why? Because she's a headcase. I'd post the video of her having a tantrum at Wimbledon last year, but it seems to have vanished from YouTube. In a nutshell, she went on a massive rant about how the line judges and umpires have "so much power" and "ruin it for everybody". Then she shook the hand of one of the line judges after making a bad call.
It's funnier when you see it, trust me.
Photos from the semis and finals of Eastbourne can be found by clicking here.
Anyway, back to Wimbledon. We managed to bag a couple tickets through the LTA members' ballot so we were spared the kerfuffle of queuing up from the early hours of the morning or, more likely, the late hours of the night before. To me, that would be a bit of a nightmare - I don't like to be around crowds of British people for any longer than is necessary. We're all morons in this country.
Grounds were due to open at 10:30am, however they let us in pretty early at around 9:45. Nice of them. However, we weren't allowed to roam the grounds until after 10:30 so we were kind of trapped in a little pen to begin with - around Court 2 with a great view of some of the outside courts with the world famous Centre Court in the background.
Half past 10 came around and they did eventually open the rest of the grounds...sort of. There's a small path at the side of the outside courts (between Centre & Court 2) and, as expected, there was a mad rush to get through to the other side. Trouble is, they'd only opened one end of the path. Myself and hundreds of others were squashed into an even smaller pen for what seemed like an enternity. That's British crowd control for you. It was probabaly only around 10 minutes but still. I like to complain about things.
The complaining ends there though - the rest of the day was awesome. We wandered around the grounds for a while before play started and had a look at everything Wimbledon has to offer - Centre Court, Henman Hill (no, it's not fucking Murray Mount), Court 1, etc. What surprised me is that it's all so much smaller than I expected - you come out of Court 2 and Centre court is practically right there in your face. I was also a bit surprised when a small stampede of kids started running in our direction. Frightening stuff. Of course, when Rafael Nadal walked right past - it all made sense.
Djokovic was the next player we spotted, again followed by a crowd of young 'uns. He was on his way to one of the outside courts to practise ahead of his match against Rochus (which turned out to be a bit of an epic one. Part of me wishes I'd bought a Centre Court ticket from the resale and stayed there 'til the end) Novak is exactly how you'd expect him to be - joking around and high-fiving all the kids.
We watched him practise for a little while, along with Nikolay Davydenko who was on the next court before we took our seats on Court 2. The order of play was rather spectacular - Kim Clijsters to start and Lleyton Hewitt to finish, with Roland Garros champion Francesca Schiavone and the man with the awesome name, Mardy Fish, squeezed in between.
Kim won comfortably, as did Mardy - and both results were ones I hoped for. Despite dropping out of the top 100 this year (although he's back up to 70ish now) Fish is awesome, not just because of his name but he's already beat Andy Murray twice this year. That makes him a legend in my eyes, so I was eager for him to win. Not to mention his opponent, Bernard Tomic, is a brat. I recall him blaming his loss at the Aussie Open this year on the scheduling ie. he couldn't play very well because it was past his bedtime.
More photos can be found on my Flickr page: flickr.com/RobynVC
Between Fish and Schiavone's matches we legged it over to Henman Hill (more like someone's back garden than a hill, because it really is that small - nothing like what you see on the telly) to watch Federer's match on the big screen. At the time he'd just won the third set after being two sets and 0-40 down at 4-4 (I think) in the third and went on to take the fourth set in a tiebreaker. To be honest, after Roger won the third set I was pretty confident he'd win it in five. A player like Falla would fall apart after missing such a great opportunity. And he did - Federer bageled in him the final set. Still a pretty epic comeback, I must say.
We got back in time to see Schiavone lose (not overly suprising, despite the French Open win) and then for Hewitt's match against some Argentine ball basher. The Aussie fanatics were there to cheer on Hewitt (and Tomic earlier but meh) as they are every year and were sat just a couple of rows in front of us. Only once before have I ever been at a tennis match where the atmosphere was more like a football match. Definitely not a bad thing, just not very tennis-like. The "Super Lleyton Hewitt" chant has been stuck in my head ever since.
We left before the end of that match (Hewitt went on to win in four) in the hope of catching the end of Justine Henin's match against Sevastova, a player I saw in Estoril a couple of months ago. Unfortunately the court was packed and the queues to get in were pretty packed as well, so we raided the shop (standard) and went home.
So, I saw some big names, some quality tennis and managed to top up my tan without suffering any first degree burns. Pretty awesome I reckon.
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