Its been a fascinating and exciting wimbledon for me. I had tickets for First Monday, Court One and First Wednesday, Court Two thanks to OULTC. Cost me a fortune, but it was going to be worth it. Had just got back from Philadelphia on Monday 21st June, and Antara met me at Gatwick, from where we departed onto a long circuitous train journey to Wimbledon. First dropped off my luggage at Victoria, and then the tube to Wimbledon Station. Although the official site advises getting off at the Southfields Station, the tube was so crowded with everyone getting off at Southfields, that we decided it would be good to be able to sit for some time, and so stayed on the train till it reached its last stop - WIMBLEDON. Really excited, we ran to catch the shuttle bus to the All England Lawn Tennis and croquet Club.
We reached at about 12:30 pm for a 1 pm start for matches on the showcourts. But, we had to stand in a queue despite having tickets, which I thought very strange, until I realised that they sell almost 10,000 centre court, Court One tickets everyday, meaning lots of people!!
The order of play included : Hewitt vs Melzer, who won Junior Wimbledon as an unseeded player in 1999, however languishing as world no.42 at present.
It was a rather boring match, with a straight sets demolition 6-2,6-4,6-2. Hewitt has some great backhand returns. We had rather decent seats, about 25 rows back and slightly to the right of the court facing the scoreboard. But, it was exciting, with a lot of Aussie fans. We walked around a bit, had some strawberries and cream, and generally took a tour of the grounds. We saw Iva Karlovic, the 6'10" Croatian serving machine( must be something in Croatia that makes them tall and big servers... Goran, Ancic, Karlovic) out-serve Paradorn on court 18. This is a really cool court, as the seats are unreserved and its right behind the press boxes, which makes it a big show court. Iva Karlovic is a big server, with a reputation for scalping some big names. He beat Hewitt in 2003 at Wimbledon in the first Round, the first time since 1967 (Santana) that the defending champion lost in the 1st round. He has this huge serve, and Paradorn, incidentally Antara's heart throb, was clueless about returning the serve.
We then saw "Beautiful" Venus play, and she played some power tennis to blow away Marie-Gayanay Mikaelian of Switzerland, 6-3,6-0 in two rather boring sets. We didn't stay for the final set as it was just too boring. Ran to barely see eventual Champion Maria Sharapova, the latest Russian teen sensation(she is 6' tall and just really hot), beat a Ukrainian with an unpronounceable name.
Maria really hits the ball hard, and she played a great game and tournament to finally win. You only hope that she doesn't go the Anna way. The day was punctuated by showers and Wimbledon should really take a closer look at its rain policy. Also, Alan Mills while making public announcements at Wimbledon sort of omits certain important things, for instance on Wednesday which was a disaster as the whole day was washed out, we only learnt from RADIO WIMBLEDON 87.7 FM (Just goes to show how much time I have spent there) that he had cancelled all the Men's 2nd Round and Women's matches and was only going to hold the unfinished matches. IT was really stupid, because we must have stayed there at least an hour and a half extra hoping for play, while if dear Mr.Mills had announced the information, we would have left and not spent exorbitant amounts of money on horrible fish and chips.
We of course were witness to Coria's match which spanned the first three days of the tourney. Coria started his match against Wesley Moodie of South Africa, who had decent gorund strokes and a reasonable serve, on Monday only to finish his five-setter on Thursday. On Tuesday, he was two points away from winning the match when they suspended play.That is ridiculous!! Wimbledon needs some roofs and a better rain policy which sees them making some brave,risky but popular decisions. It seems absurd in this country to wait for a cloudless sky to begin or resume play. That is impossible, it always rains. On Wednesday they took the covers on and off three times. On Saturday when Bujul went, they took the covers off five times, before the groundstaff got so annoyed that they refused to obey orders on Court Seven, and just waited until the next shower five minutes later!!
The Weather in this country is truly unpredictable. While walking back from Wimbledon, we found that the city of Wimbledon, a fifteen minute walk from the grounds was dry while over the grounds it poured. Madness!! How could you ever live in a country where you have to always carry a raincoat or umbrella? Its just too cumbersome!
Anyway, for all my cribbing its just great to be at Wimbledon, and I would love to either umpire or play on those courts. Playing might be slightly out of the question, but I really must write to the LTA and ask them to allow me to umpire some matches.Also, remember to claim 56 pounds from the OULTC.
