Wimbledon: Tuesday

Inside Centre Court

 Wimbledon certainly is another of my British sports promised lands (along with St. Andrew’s).  And while seeing and walking on the Old Course at St. Andrew’s is certainly one of my top sports experiences…I’m not sure if even that can compete with experiencing Wimbledon in full force. 

We made a two day trip down to London and were able to see almost everything Wimbledon has to offer…except Rafael Nadal…

-  Before we get to the hardcore tennis stuff, a few notes on the rest of our trip.  First, we travelled down to London by train Monday night after the Paul Krugman lecture (Krugman was brilliant, as expected…he’s pretty much a liberal icon…one of my favorite lines on the current status of American economic policy, “My President has been too timid at times…and one half of the political spectrum is completely insane”).  We arrived at our luxurious hotel near the Earl’s Court underground station in the South Kensington/Chelsea district around 11 p.m.  The Chelsea House Hotel is a converted walk-up type building.  Our room was on the third floor and I noticed immediately that it had a distinctly fun house/Van Gogh’s “Bedroom” feel to it. The floor was substantially pitched in one direction, so much so that setting items on the table at the high end of the room was rather hazardous.  And needless to say trying to put the toilet seat up was an impossibility. We then found out that our bed was slightly less than ideal…in that each side of  the divided queen mattress had a Grand Canyon sized crater in the middle.  Either we found out where the city of London keeps its wrecking balls during the day or the last one hundred guests were related to Humpty Dumpty…those are the only two possible explanations I could come up with.  And to top it all off, the hotel reception guy (who was actually very nice) apparently sleeps on the floor behind the counter as Michelle saw him wake up to greet us in pajama bottoms when we were checking out (kind of reminded me of Jason from the Mayberry Hotel).  All and all, the place had a lot of character…

-  On to the tennis, first off, Wimbledon is an amazingly well-run event.  Exceptional really.  Being able to buy tickets for less than 50 pounds to Centre Court the day before play is amazing, not to mention being able to queue up for a few hours and get on the grounds for 20 pounds. Even the concessions are stellar because in most places, each vendor only sells one or two items (for example, strawberries at one place, pizza at another, etc.) so wait times are minimal. And the seating arrangements at the grounds’ courts are run with tremendous precision. The stewards really make sure that all the available seats are filled and people get in and out efficiently.  I can’t think of a single problem with how the event is run.

-  Anyway, on Tuesday we were lucky enough to have scored Centre Court tickets on Ticketmaster the day before. This made things a lot easier. All it took was a short (and surprisingly uncrowded) subway trip down to Wimbledon from our hotel and about a 10 minute walk from the station. We practically walked right into the grounds without any wait around 9:45. That gave us plenty of time to just soak it all in prior to the commencement of play.  And take pictures like these…

Inside Court 2...aka the Graveyard Court

Outside Courts in the early morning

Me and Fred Perry

 -  Before play kicked off on Centre Court at the highly civilized and very Wimbledon time of 1 p.m., we had the chance to catch a glimpse of some of the players and their entourages (I so want an entourage) moving to and from the practice courts.

Richard Williams...the Maestro

Oracene

Venus

At one point, a group of avid Roger Federer supporters, complete with red and white Gilligan-style hats and apparently representing something called RF.com, moved in beside us. One of the particularly obnoxious and loud ladies made a point to mention often that she had some stuff that she was supposed to deliver to Roger. Turns out the stuff was some hand-sewn, bedazzled bag and something else in a poster tube. I really hope they succeeded…I’m sure Roger has been worried sick that those important items hadn’t arrived yet.  I’m frankly surprised that he managed to prepare for the tournament with that anxiety on his mind.  I know I’m a huge sports fan and all…but some things that so-called adults do as sports fans just makes me cringe.

-  After milling about the practice area for a while (ok, maybe that’s my only complaint about Wimbledon…the majority of the practice courts aren’t visible to spectators…understandable, but disappointing) we caught some early action on Court 8 featuring Daniela Hantuchova.  I’ve always felt Daniela is highly underrated on the attractiveness meter for female tennis players.  See if you agree…

Daniela

Warming Up

-  Centre Court action kicked off with Serena Williams facing some girl.  Serena dominated the first and third sets (which we watched) and managed to lose the second set while we ducked out for the first of our 6 tins of strawberries on the day.  She looked very sharp in the sets we saw, especially for being out the past year, and I’m not sure how she lost the middle set.  Afterwards, Serena was very emotional and gave a really moving and tearful interview.  It was really nice to see how much the crowd supported and appreciated her.  A very welcome change from the U.S. where the crowds are inexplicably (well…or not inexplicably, I think the reason is pretty obvious really) lukewarm toward the Williams.  They are both great champions and excellent representatives of our country and shouldn’t receive as much criticism as they seem to get.

Serena

-  Next up was the great Roger Federer versus Kukushkin from Kazakhstan (insert Borat joke here). Fed was rather flat early, but managed to pull off a routine straight set win in the end.  Amazing and beautiful player, obviously.  The most impressive aspect of his game in person is the little handsy shots he plays in situations where he’s forced to improvise…nobody can play those shots like he can.  Plus, his forehand is a lot more powerful than it appears because it’s so effortless.  Watching Roger play always makes me think…in the “greatest of all time” debate, who comes out on top right now?  For me it has to be Federer, Nadal, and Sampras in some order.  I eliminate anyone from before 1980 because the game has changed too much and I don’t see how a Laver (for example) could compete today.  Federer and Nadal have the career slam, so that gives them an edge, but I think at their respective peaks I would tend to take Sampras in a match against either on any surface other than clay.  Makes for a tricky decision.

Federer and Kukushkin

Classy vest, Roger!

"Well played."

Headband toss

-  I have to say that tennis fans tend to be more knowledgeable about their sport than many other sports fans.  These people really know their players…probably more so than I do in many cases.  However, I did happen to find two awesome exceptions sitting behind us at Centre Court.  Here’s just one conversation I overheard…

     -  Guy 1: “Which one is Federer?”

     -  Guy 2: “The one that’s going to win.”

     (looking at scores from other courts on the scoreboard)

    -  Guy 1:  “Seems like the scores are always 6 to something.”

     (at the start of the match)

     - Guy 2: “I bet Federer doesn’t lose more than 10 points the entire match.”

      (he then proceeded to count the points lost…luckily his point count ended about 3 games in…as the

     first set was 7-6…and yes, the 7 sent Guy 1into a cloud of confusion)

-  Djokovic was our final match on Centre against the Frenchman Jeremy Chardy. Chardy was pretty terrible. About all he had going for him was a serve that reached 135 mph (see below).  Otherwise, really weak.  Djokovic rolled…and since he’s not my favorite player to watch, we left early.

Stretch it out Djokovic

Chardy's best morment

-  From there, we headed over to Court 3 to catch the Isner-Mahut re-match.  We had to queue outside for a bit until some unreserved seats came open, but we got in early in the first set.  I gave my thoughts on Isner yesterday (he lost today, by the way), but this was a fun…if rather routine match to watch.  It was interesting to note that apparently neither player has developed much of a return game since last year (the complete lack of which allowed them to hold serve a collective 137 times in a row last year…or something).  And most importantly, Mahut still has outstanding hair.  We ran into some recent Ohio State grads in the queue, each with their bottle of wine in hand, who had arrived at the grounds at 2 p.m., gained admission at 5 and were planning on leaving at 7.  Weird itinerary. 

Big John

Isner, post-match

Yeah!

Classic ball girl technique

Fantastic hair...pictures don't do it justice

-  We pretty much called it a day when the Isner match ended at around 8.  What a great day it was.  More to come…and more pictures from Tuesday in the next, photo-only post.