Love Wimbledon

I officially completed a life goal. Never, ever did I think I would make it to Wimbledon, let alone have seats in the eighth row of Court #2. I was just hoping to go see the grounds during this trip, but Wednesday was so much better than that.

Biz and I left the flats around 4:40 a.m. to see our bus pulling away, without us on it. So we started walking to the tube and Biz hailed us a cab and we made it to Waterloo Station in time for the first train at 5 a.m. From the Wimbledon station, it was about a 30 minute walk until we found the queue and got our queue cards around 6:15 a.m.…numbers 1366 and 1367.

Then came the magic moment, the Wimbledon steward (who helped people queue) told the people in the queue behind us that the first 500 people in line got centre court tickets, the next 500 got court #1 and we got court #2! I was going to be on a show court at Wimbledon! I couldn’t believe it.

So we stood in the queue until around 8 a.m. when they gave us our wristbands for Court #2. Then it was more line waiting in the Wimbledon golf court, until we could buy our tickets and go in. After looking at the order of play, we went to the shop and then waited for the grounds to open at 10:30 a.m.

When the courts opened, we wandered through the open courts to where a few players were warming up. And who was there warming up? Oh Andy Roddick. Not a big deal at all!

After freaking out and taking tons of pictures, we wandered through the courts and grounds more, keeping our eyes open for a court that might have Venus or Roger Federer on it warming up. But we didn’t see them so it was off to court #2 to find our seats.
The seats were amazing. We were 8th row, on the side of the court. First up was Justine Henin! She won with ease. And although the tennis was great, so was all around it. there were ball boys or girls in blue Ralph Lauren polos on each of the 4 corners of the court and 2 at the net. Then there were 5 line judges on each side of the net. The judges were all dressed in cream pants (or long skirts for women) and blue button down shirts with cream hats and as each point started they would put their hands on their thighs and bend to watch the lines.

After Justine, we watched Gael Monfils and Karol Beck. It was a long match, but so good. And Monfils is such a good player! During the next match, we decided to go exploring and get the classic Wimbledon strawberries and cream with PIMMS to drink. But on our way to the food, we passed Serena and Venus’s mom coming out of centre court! She was inches from us!

We then explored centre court and to my surprise, when we asked if we could sneak in to take a quick picture, the guard let us! He even told us to go down the steps and he took a picture of us. So then we asked to see Court #1 and we couldn’t stay long, but we did see Federer on a change over!

Back at Court #2, there was a men’s singles match that we watched the end of and then it was #4 Jelena Jankovic against #60 Aleksandra Wozniak. It was actually a close match, but Jelena ended up winning. But during that match, they would show the scores of other matches on the scoreboard and that’s when we saw it….the longest tennis match ever. They were in the 5th set and had to win by 2. They ended up stopping because it was too dark at 59 games all….10 hours in. They finished the match on Thursday with a total of 11 hours of play. Crazy! And we saw them walk off court.

We went home tired, hungry and sunburned. But it was totally worth it to see the Wimbledon tournament!