wimbledon

We woke up at 5am. That’s right, 5am. We didn’t leave our flat until 6am, but it was still insanely early. We arrived at the queue for Wimbledon at 7am, thanks in part to our newly developed power walking skills (you pick it up quick in London). Once we got there, we received queue cards. Our standing numbers were 7074 and 7107. That means there were over 7,000 people queuing ahead of us already. At 7am in the morning! Total craziness!

It was a good thing we each brought a book to read, some food and water, because the queue didn’t start moving until 11am. Yes, your math is correct – that’s four hours of waiting. By this time, thousands of more people had shown up after us. Suckers. Everyone knows that any number over 7,500 is so last season. J/k Also, we overheard some people asking where the queue was for Monday’s matches. As in, people were showing up early on a Saturday morning to start lining up for a full two days in order to have a chance at scoring tickets on Monday. Now that’s commitment.

To get to the ticket booths, we had to walk on the sidewalk of a major road, through a golf course, over a bridge, and then finally arriving at the gates. You’d think we were going to a castle or something after that trek. But we were greeted, not by adoring masses, but by...security. After the people manning the checkpoint had determined to their satisfaction that we weren’t crazies hell-bent on assassinating Roger Federer, we were allowed to purchase our tickets. We bought grounds passes only (for a mere £20 each), which meant we could watch any matches that were not on Centre Court, Courts 1 or 2 (i.e. the important matches). I guess Venus Williams will have to catch us another time. She was one of the bigger names that were playing that day. Besides, we weren’t bothered enough to fork out the £60 (each!) for show court tickets, even if there were any remaining. There is an interesting system where court ticket holders can return their tickets upon departure so that they can be resold to people who want to catch matches later that day (if any). Tickets are quite reasonably priced at £5, but again, we weren’t willing to wait in any more lines. In addition, with Andy Murray playing, no one was about to give up their tickets.

Of course, the place was packed; the All England Lawn Tennis Club has capacity for about 56,000 people or so on a given day and it seems they were intent on trying to test how true that was. The reason it was packed was because a) it was a Saturday and weekends are always busy in London, b) Andy Murray, Britain’s hometown hope was playing, and c) Wimbledon is always packed. But hey, that’s part of the fun.

The day we attended saw some of the bigger upsets of the tournament, with Kuznetsova and Jankovic bowing out slightly less than gracefully to non-seeds. On the men’s draw, Davydenko was bumped in similar fashion, although some guy named Roddick made it through. Of course, we didn’t watch any of those matches, although we did hear the cheering from outside the stadium. We could have seen some higher profile outside court (#’s 3 & 4) matches, but there were more queues for seats/standing room and after our four hours in the park, we had had enough of waiting for one day. As a result, we attended matches for what we like to think are the Centre Court stars of tomorrow, i.e. the youth tournament. Youth tennis, for those of you who are into such things, is really more about who makes fewer unforced errors than any strategy or who can hit the winners. We watched one match where two poor girls traded breaks all the way up to a tiebreak. That’s 12 straight games where neither girl could hold a serve.

Still, it was a great experience. And that’s what we were really going for in the first place, to soak in the atmosphere and tradition. We strolled through the hallowed grounds (Caspian even wore his Rod Lavers!), sipped on some Pimm’s and munched on some strawberries and cream. Yes, that’s fresh strawberries, lightly dusted with some sugar and drenched with good, old-fashioned double cream. Rich, but tasty. It might sound weird to you, but we thought it should be known that 26,500 kilos of strawberries were consumed at Wimbledon this year. That many people can’t be wrong. We considered getting a glass of champagne to complete the tradition trifecta (the two staple drinks of Wimbledon are champagne and Pimm’s), but the asking price of £12 a glass was just a little too rich for our Canadian dollar-raised blood.

Instead we decided to allocate funds towards some souvenirs instead. One of the matches we attended happened to be next to a booth where they were selling tennis balls that had been used in the tournament. With balls being replaced every 7 games, over 54,200 balls were used during the two weeks of match play. Well, 6 of those balls are now in our possession. One day, we’ll give them to our kids and tell them that they were smacked around by Roger Federer en route to his record 15th Grand Slam title (the balls, not the kids).

Finally, on a bit of a sentimental note, we thought of Caspian’s late grandfather, who was a big fan of tennis. In addition to trying to coach Caspian (whose shoes were apparently always too heavy for proper tennis form) at tennis when he was younger, Caspian’s grandfather was a faithful viewer of the Grand Slam tournaments. We like to think that Wimbledon was his favourite – Caspian even remembers receiving sweatbands in the Wimbledon colours, purple and green – and trust that he would have been pleased with our little tribute.