Love, Wimbledon

July 7, 2021

I’ve been playing tennis for most of my life now, but have been a fan for much longer. My mother competed in club tournaments and dragged us kids along, where of course we wouldn’t – couldn’t, really – sit still long enough to watch. I spent that time running around empty courts, climbing the umpire’s chair when no one was looking and gleefully played with the score boxes, falling in love with the idea of tennis before I even knew what it was.

 

When I was old enough to understand the game, I was glued to the TV watching Tracy Austin, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg and Ilie Nastasie. I initially didn’t care much for John McEnroe, mostly because I didn’t understand his profound vocabulary, but later came to love him. Eventually I’d go on to play myself, junior tournaments and varsity tennis (though never good enough to make a college team. I was too undisciplined to take it seriously.)

 

 

 

The first time I recall falling in love with Wimbledon was the summer of 1987, when Pat Cash beat Ivan Lendl for the gentlemen’s title (him climbing the stands to hug his father and coach are forever tattooed in my memory and it was the first time I ever cried at sports) and my idol Martina Navratilova defeated Steffi Graf for the ladies’. That was the year I watched as much tennis as pre-cable TV could offer, and drank in every bit of Bud Collins’ color commentary.

 

… If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…

 

 

The tradition and the grandness of it all, what’s not to love? That’s when I became a rabid fan. (A quick way to get on my bad side is to pronounce it WimbleTon and not WimbleDon.)

 

I asked my dad to write the check (heyyyy, remember checks?) for my first magazine subscription (Tennis) and any time a tennis athlete was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, I bought it with my lunch money. I spent weekends watching every televised tournament after early-morning hitting sessions with my mom (she liked to go when it was cool and the sun was low), then it would be a cocktail of whatever was on NBC and then if I was lucky, more on ESPN.

 

 

 

My teenage bedroom and school locker were peppered with posters of Andre Agassi. A couple boys at school said he was a flash in the pan and that he’d never win a major. I said, you just watch, I bet his first Grand Slam will be Wimbledon. (It was, that summer right after graduation, so I was robbed of the opportunity to gloat in my friends’ faces.)

I say all this because for all my tennis fanaticsm, I had never attended a Grand Slam event. It was always on the list of things to do next, I just never got around to it.

 

Until now.

 

 

… If you can dream–and not make dreams your master…

 

 

I timed this trip to coincide with Wimbledon specifically as I thought with the pandemic and restrictions and overall hesitancy for travel, it was my best chance to get tickets and that it wouldn’t be as crowded as normal.

 

I’ve seen those queues for tickets year after year and it just looked like a pain in the arse. Mind you, I signed up for my first Wimbledon ticket lottery in 1999 — and never once won.

 

 

 

This year, because of the pandemic, Wimbledon announced that the only way to get tickets would be to buy them from debenture holders (that is their version of season ticket holders.) This of course turned out to be a small crock of shit because they ended up releasing tickets for general purchase (at a fraction of what I paid.)

 

Now I say it’s only a small crock of shit because the tickets do sell out quickly, so paying top dollar (sorry, pound) for a guaranteed seat is not a bad idea.

 

I ended up getting a ticket in a prime spot on Centre Court for Day 2, on the front row of a section on the same level as the royal box. And for the session, I would get to watch ladies’ #1 Ashleigh Barty, my current favorite player Roger Federer and Serena Williams, of whom I am not a fan but delighted at the chance to see her play because she is, without question, one of the greats. Worth every damn pence.

 

 

 

I had my dress picked out months ago. Wimbledon technically does not have a dress code but jeans and sneakers are frowned upon.  Remember when Meghan had tongues wagging when she wore jeans? Even though dressed up with a blazer and pricy Louboutins, she still couldn’t be allowed in the Royal Box because of a silly, outdated policy.

 

I only brought one pair of dressy shoes and because they’re 4” wedges, I believed it wasn’t a good idea to wear any kind of heels if expected to do a lot of walking that day.  I found a pair of sensible leather espadrilles at Marks & Spencer. (While I Ubered to the venue, I ended up trekking the mile or so to the tube station on the return trip. So the espadrilles were the right decision.)

 

Look, I believe that their jeans policy is antiquated, but imagine if someone like, say Meghan, dresses it up and then another comes with a Van Halen T-shirt, determining what’s smart casual and not becomes, really, a matter of fashion subjectiveness. So it’s cleaner to just say “no jeans.” Period. I get it. Still … a policy that needs updating IMHO.

 

The weather forecast had called for 40% chance of rain, though not too cold for the knee-length summer dress I brought specifically for this. (I didn’t realize that they frowned upon strapless or strappy frocks as well, so I bought a cashmere sweater to cover up.)

 

If you ever find yourself going to Wimbledon, try to respect the dress code tradition and succumb to the pomp and circumstance. It’s part of the experience.

 

 

 

I walked around the grounds a little, having a smoke by the main scoreboard taking it all in, before settling on an outside court to watch the Martincova-Riske match. Then I grabbed a sausage roll for a light lunch, explored the museum, shopped a little and bought their famous strawberries and cream en route to my seat at Centre Court.

 

It started drizzling (a light mist, mind), so the first match was delayed to close the roof. Barty won the first set easily, lost the second, and eventually took the third.

 

 

Then came Roger to a rousing welcome.

 

… If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings…

 

 

 

 

 

I was hoping that I would get to see either Roger or Rafa play, so even though the draws hadn’t been announced when I bought my ticket (I purchased early to guarantee I’d get to go.) Knowing that Djokovic would be playing on Day 1, there was a significant chance that they would schedule Roger for Day 2. They love him here, surely they would put him for Centre Court for every one of his matches? And I was right. That Serena would close out the session was a welcome bonus.

 

Roger was not having a good day: inconsistent, getting bad bounces, and his opponent, Adrian Mannarino, was playing well and getting lucky. That’s never a good combo. But Adrian’s luck ran out, and with the match tied at 2-2, he slipped and retired due to a knee injury. I suspected that Roger’s shots were off because he was probably trying not to slip himself.

 

Grass can be cruel.

 

It’s never how you should see your hero win; you want him to, under the best conditions, triumph, you know… heroically.

 

 

Next up was Serena and I predicted that her match would end in 32 minutes. It ended in 34, and not the way anyone expected because she, too, would fall victim to the slippery court. While not my favorite, you don’t want to see a great champion go out that way either and her whelping in agony is one of the toughest sounds I’d ever heard.

 

 

Would I have loved to see both matches play out in full? Absolutely. In Roger’s case, it could have gone either way so I am relieved for the walkover. I’d hate to have witnessed him lose. Would I have enjoyed watching Serena trounce her young opponent in her usual dominating way? Sure.

 

That was not how the ball would bounce this day.

 

… If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it…

– Rudyard Kipling

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two of the greatest players of all time ended their matches prematurely to injury, back to back, though with mixed results.

 

I ended up coming back a second time, when I was able to secure tickets to Court 3 on Day 6. Because of restricted seating, this year Wimbledon instituted a two-ticket-per-household-maximum policy. I might have tried to save my second ticket for the quarterfinals or semis, but it was hard enough to get the Court 3 tickets (playing a game of refresh browser every 3 minutes for a couple of days until I was able to buy one.) I think I made the right decision. Besides, this gives me a new goal of coming back to watch a championship match someday.

 

 

 

 

This time, I decided to take the Tube all the way to Wimbledon village proper (a much longer and uphill trek to the grounds than the Southfields station.) I also thought it would be a good idea to incorporate a walk through Wimbledon Common. Knowing that this trip was going to involve a little hike, I eschewed the dressy policy and decided to wear jeans. I picked my least faded, dressiest, unscruffy-looking pair, which happened to be clean too, matched it with a nice blouse and my trusty new espadrilles, and I thought I looked respectable enough.

 

I underestimated the size of the common and the walk took more than an hour. Some parts of the park looked downright sketchy (this was no Kensington Gardens) and I wondered if I was setting myself up to be a kidnapping victim. After about 20 minutes, I reached a more populated part of the park with lots of paths and families and runners and then I knew I’d be okay. There was a windmill somewhere in the park and basking in the relief  that there would be no international incident today, went looking for it. (Found it!) After which point, I decided I had about as much as I could take of the park and set off for the club.

 

 

Thankfully, it had started raining so play was delayed. I took the opportunity to shop for souvenirs and eat some lunch. When they announced that play would be resuming shortly, I grabbed a Pimms and headed for my seat.

 

I actually love Court 3, despite its lack of a roof. It’s the largest of the non-marquee courts like Centre, Court No. 1 and Court No. 2 (also known as the graveyard of champions. I tried really really hard to get a ticket to No. 2 court but no luck.)

 

 

My session was a gentleman’s match between seventh seed Matteo Berrettini and Aljaz Bedene. There were only two matches scheduled for the court but because of the rain delay, the match wasn’t over until about 3 pm. Berrettini won his match, and I expect great things from him. I’m looking forward to following his career. I would have stayed to see the ladies’ match next, but I had to scurry home to take on a work conference call.

 

Truth be told, I find women’s tennis a bit boring these days, gone are the colorful personalities of Navratilova, Hingis and Seles. And while there’s more punch in the game now, it’s still not quite as jaw-dropping as the men’s, where 140-mph serves are common. But I’ll be back for sure and it really wouldn’t matter who I get to watch, because Wimbledon is Wimbledon.

 

 

 

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