My day can be summed up in one word: Wimbledon. I hope this causes severe jealousy in all who may read this. It was SO NEAT! All it took was a 15 minute tube ride and a 15 minute walk and there we were. We paid 16 pounds to get onto the grounds. Once in we could see courts 3-18 for free. These were mostly doubles matches and juniors matches, but lets be honest... they're still the world's finest. We watched a match between two junior male competitors - one from Mexico (who had an awful sounding grunt and cussed up a storm every time he missed a point - in Spanish of course).
Mr. Bulgaria - we liked him better.
How's that for a nice backbend on the serve?!
We were on the front row for the juniors match. It is open seating and there are just three rows on both sides of the court.
But after a little while of that "free" match, we decided we really wanted to see one on Centre Court. We only had to wait in line for about a half hour to get resale tickets for just 5 pounds. That means we got stellar seats in the main court from where others (who paid big bucks) had decided to leave.
Waiting in line for resale tickets. This is the whole group...
Sarah, Dave, Megan, Hillary, Lizzy, Mallory, Cami, and David
It started to rain while we were in line, but that just made the line go faster as it encouraged some people to leave the match and sell us their tickets.
So just take a guess at who was playing on Centre Court when we showed up...
Serena Williams!
No joke! Serena was playing "Miss J. Zheng". She was a firecracker little player. The crowd seemed more in favor of Zheng, maybe because she was the underdog. Well, Serena won in a tie-breaker over the second set. She had won the first set. I the second set, both girls won 6 games and each got six points in the tie-breaker so Serena just BARELY won playing only 2 sets. Hooty-hoo! It was so invigorating. I think I'll watch Wimbledon more often!
During Serena and Zheng's match, the rain came down and the umbrellas came up. They also IMMEDIATELY covered the court with a huge tarp that they easily manuvered into a tent to protect the grass from getting muddy. We strolled around the gift shop until it let up enought to resume the game.
Dave Heywood gave my favorite quote of the day. I commented that I love how respectful the spectators to this sport are. Dave's reply was this, "I know! You could almost pass the sacrament!" How exactly he got that image out of a zillion tennis fans beats me, but its kinda true - the crowd is so disciplined and respectful of the players.
After the rain, Serena finneshed and won her game. Then we stayed for half of the next game - doubles mens, but it was so cold that we couldn't even enjoy it. We came home - cold and hungry, and so glad that we decided to go to Wimbledon today!
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