Tracy at Wimbledon
This
trip to Wimbledon was an added extra, unanticipated as it was.
When Susan offered us her apartment, she also offered a ticket to
the tennis matches, as her husband Huw would be unable to use his (having
started his job down in Johannesburg). Dale said, "you go..." and I never looked
back!
We
arrived quite early -- a good thing as, even with tickets in hand, there were a
couple of queues to deal with before actually entering the site. The picture to
the left shows the main entrance to the Centre Court area, but there was little
action there until later in the morning, so we started by
scoping out the action on the grass courts. En route, of course, we stopped to
check out the draw for the day, along with breakfast...strawberries and cream.
These photos were taken from our vantage point in the
Centre Court arena; I'd say we had perfect seats. (The only problem was the
skinny guy next to Susan who didn't stop loudly chomping on an impressive array
of snacks from 10 until we left at 7!) The day we were there (which was the last
day of Opening Week), the champions of the day on Centre Court were V. Williams,
Federer (of course) and Roddick. Not bad for Friday of the first week!
In
between Centre Court matches, we'd return to the grass courts, where tennis
celebs like Capriati and Navritalova were doing their thing. Martina was a riot
--- and a real crowd-pleaser in her woman's doubles match. When one fellow
called out something like "I never knew a 50 year-old woman could do that!"
(after a fine overhead smash) she called back, "there's a lot more of this!"
For me, a highpoint of the day
occurred early in the morning, as people were just coming out to warm up. At one
point, Susan and I were looking in one direction when we heard a voice call out,
"Step aside, please" and we looked up to see Serena and Venus walking along
before us. We followed them (and weren't alone in this thought!) to the court on
which they were to warm up. It was amazing; I found myself thinking of my
sisters and playing tennis with them (as we did so often growing up). There they
were, just like "normal" players -- first stretching and chatting, slowly moving
back to the recesses of the court.
The
"crowd" at Wimbledon was almost as entertaining as was the tennis. Neither Susan
nor I ever did figure out these "wizards," who appeared to spend the entire time
walking around, attracting everyone's attention! My first Wimbledon, but not my
last.