Wimbledon Tennis Championships

Website: http://www.wimbledon.org

A week ago last Thursday I went with ABJ to see the Wimbledon Tennis Championships 2008. This world-famous tennis tournament takes place every summer for a few weeks and during all my time in London I'd never visited it.

Part of the reason for this is that the advanced sale tickets sell out many months earlier and to get in on the day involves queuing for hours. A large number of tickets are available to buy on the day but the good ones sell out quick. The really committed tennis fans camp out in tents for the night before to be able to get tickets for "Centre Court" where the tennis pros play.

Unsure what to expect ABJ and I arrived at Southfields tube station at about 4pm. Following the flow of people we were shocked to see a queue about 50 yards long. "Oh no! That's really long!" we thought. We followed directions to the back of the queue and saw it was actually 100 yards long. "Oh dear!"... No wait... We stood stock-still, our wide eyes following the queue along. It wrapped around the edge of a huge field used as a car park, round the corner, down the other edge and around another corner. The part we could now see was at least 500 yards long! It turns out that the full queue - including the part we couldn't even see from the car park - was over a mile long!We trekked across the vast car park, positioned ourselves at the end of the queue and discussed what to do. While we discussed we were handed a queue card noting our numbered position in the queue. My number was 11594. We were told we almost definitely get in but would have to queue for 2 and 1/2 hours. We decided that "we'd come that far" so might as well stay. ABJ went to Southfields to bring back food and by the time she returned I'd been given a "Guide to queueing at Wimbledon" and a "I've been in the queue to see the 2008 Wimbledon tennis championships" sticker. They really take the queueing seriously...

I don't want this account to feel like queueing for over 2 hours so I'll skip forward to the highlights. As we munched our houmous, bread, cheese, crisps, grapes and jaffa cakes we passed by people with tents, burger bars, ice cream vans and were eventually lead through an exhibition drawn by Gerard Scarfe showing famous tennis players from the past:
Finally the queue filtered through a thorough security search of bags and jackets etc and we arrived at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club. The time was 6.30pm (so the queue really did take about 2 and 1/2 hours!). We bought the cheapest (£14) ticket that allowed us entry to courts 3-19.

Once we were inside past the ticket barriers we stopped and wondered what to do. We'd been queuing for so long that I'd forgotten there was still tennis to come - I felt like the epic queue was the reason everyone was there.

We just wanted to see some tennis. We practically ran to the nearest court and, having watched a rally, breathed a sigh of relief. But who were these players? Where were all the famous tennis stars? We scuttled through the crowd to hungrily see another court but it wasn't that exciting. Was it all going to be like this?

Deciding to explore we climbed up the hill to watch "The Big Screen" at the Aorongi Terrace. People lounged about on the grassy slope watching a match between famous players on Centre Court on the huge screen. We watched for a little bit then felt restless and went to find some quality tennis. Studying the map we headed off to courts 2-11. There were some courts so busy that passers-by were peaking through the wooden slats around the court.

The paths were crammed with tennis fans trying to outmanoeuvre each other to get to the best court.We finally saw a few matches and tried to take cool photos of the players mid-serve:
We settled for a slow singles game between two people we didn't know. After watching for about 10 minutes there was a commotion behind us. Venus and Serena Williams were walking towards court 11 surrounded by a mob of autograph hunters. No sooner had I alerted ABJ to their presence than she was scrambling over spectators in an attempt to reach court 11. She ran ahead of me as we were swept up in a whirlwind of fans streaming forward, clawing at each other, hurrying to get a seat for the court 11 game. ABJ arrived first and saved one for me. We settled down to watch the match. It was between two Polish women and the American Williams sisters. Unfortnately the game wasn't very equal and the Williams' won easily. As they hurled their 120mph serves across the net the Americans in the audience whooped and cheered. The game was simply settled after half an hour.

We flowed out with the other fans, passed the "Cushions for hire" stall and wandered aimlessly to the food courts. We had discussed earlier buying strawberries and cream but, at 8pm, were not in the mood. There were television crews broadcasting the summary of the days tennis:
Dusk fell. The tennis was over. We felt tired and wandered slowly out and back to Southfields tube.

Summary: An unique experience but not one I want to repeat urgently.