I managed to get myself organised last August and actually applied for tickets through the Wimbledon Ballot. Well, I am happy to say that my number came up and on Thursday, I headed off to Court No 1 with my friend Sue, who I’ve known since I was about 6 years old.
We did the school run and thanks to both our hubbies and my fab friend Lisa, both children were sorted out once pre-school and school was over.
The timings to get to Wimbledon couldn’t have worked out better. Train from Thatcham into Reading – VERY quick change and ran straight onto the fast train into Paddington. Headed for the District Line and the tube was just pulling in. We even managed to get seats!. From Southfields Tube Station, it was a 25 minute walk to Wimbledon itself – exactly two hours after leaving Thatcham, we were stood outside Court No 1 – very exciting!!
We had time for a brief walk around some of the courts and saw a little French/German action on Court No 14 beat Beck and Benneteau before taking our seats on Court No 1. We had fab seats opposite the umpires chair and we were about a third of the way up. The sun would be on us all day so we made sure we slapped on the suntan lotion and drank loads of water (along with a Pimms or two along the way).
First on court was Maria Sharapova who had a reasonably comfortable win over her opponent. Then came Robin Soderling against his opponent … once they figured out how to return the serve, there were some great rallies (but plenty of aces!).
They saved the best match until last … Sam Querry against Ivan Dodig. Soderling took the first set reasonably comfortably but Dodig fought back to take the second and really got the crowd behind him with his personality coming out. One lone voice in the crowd shouted, “Come on Sam” and the response was a unanimous, “Come on Ivan”. In the end, the fourth set went the distance to a tie break. Both players had chances, but in the end Querry went through 10-8.
Throughout the day, scores of the top matches were displayed on our scoreboard. We could hear massive cheers go up so we knew that there must have been a conclusion to the marathan match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut … but frustratingly, we had a rather long couple of games so the score took a while to come through. A huge round of applause went up when the 5th set score of 70-68 went in favour of Isner. You did have to feel for Mahut, but his place in Tennis history is cemented.
Big cheers also went up for Murray’s win on Centre Court in front of the Queen … and lots of gasps for Nadal’s topsy-turvy match when he was pushed to 5 sets and big sighs of relief when he finally won the 5th.
Just as we were about to leave, we heard they were bringing a Doubles on court so we stayed to see who would be playing. Laura Robson and Sally Peer were up against Zheng and Kanepi. We decided to stay until 8pm as we needed to get the trains back home and Robson/Peer had just lost the first set 6-2.
Coming home wasn’t so easy. We caught a Route Master bus from Wimbledon to the tube station and joined the back of the queue for the tube. There were problems on the District Line so things were moving slowly. We were hoping to catch the 2121 train to Reading. We eventually got on the tube and were making good progress until Fulham Broadway, when some pressed the passenger alarm so we weren’t going anywhere until it had been checked out. No emergency and were eventually on our way making our train with 5 minutes to spare. Train onto Thatcham was waiting for us and were back home by 10.40pm.
Fabulous day out … and probably the first time since having kids that Sue and I have been able to spend to the day together and actually chat without being interrupted or sorting the kids out. Fingers crossed, we can make this a yearly day out.
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