Explorations of Ambiguity: Wimbledon: Wednesday

On Wednesday we were back for more…this time queue style. One of the big traditions at Wimbledon is the queue, which is pretty unique for major sporting events because you can line up the morning of (or night before for the more hardcore fans) and gain entry for reasonable prices. Plus, a substantial number of tickets for Centre Court, Court 1, and Court 2 are made available. Unfortunately for us, the British favorite Andy Murray was on Court 1 on Wednesday, so the queue was longer than Tuesday. We got in line at 7:30 and just missed the last of the Court 2 tickets. I wanted those because my old nemesis Mardy Fish was first on Court 2. Anecdotally, the Murray effect is quite large as the person sitting behind us on Centre Court on Tuesday said they got tickets from the queue and they said they entered also around 7:30.

The Queue

Working it out in the queue, guns like those don't make themselves

Anyway, we landed grounds passes and got to see a lot of this to start with.

I have to say though that the Wimbledon weather forecasters are pretty solid. They said at 11 a.m. that it would dry up by 3 p.m. and play ended up starting at 3:30. The weather delay gave me that chance to try clock my serve in the Let’s Play tent (a somewhat respectable 85 mph…I could definitely compete with second serves of the women). And we also had more time to eat 6 to 8 more containers of these…

Apparently the strawberries are special ordered and delivered from Kent. It shows. The consistency and quality is incredible. I really can’t say enough about this.

And most importantly during the rain delay, I learned once again how great my wife is. The couple behind us on Court 12 during the delay featured the whiniest girl friend/wife ever. At about 11:30, she was complaining that they had now "wasted the entire day" and that sitting there waiting for it to stop raining was "ridiculous." I did like the guy's reply though..."It's not even noon yet...how have we wasted the whole day?" And also while we were waiting for the weather to clear, Venus was playing on Centre Court. She dropped the first set in a tiebreaker prompting the guy beside us to say, "Venus isn't out of it." My wife responded eagerly, "No way...Venus is a fighter, she's never out of it." (I was like, "Huh, where did that come from? I like it.") The guy then said, "I wouldn't be surprised if she comes back and wins." My wife asserted with great conviction, "Oh, she'll definitely win." (I'm so not worthy...and by the way, Venus won 8-6 in the third).

We finally got to see some live action on Court 12. Richard Gasquet versus Igor Kusnitsyn. Gasquet has an awesome backhand and pretty much dominated. But the highlight of the match was definitely the chair umpire (see below…it’s pretty obvious why).