Henman Bill at Wimbledon

Following on from BB, Hawkeye and Barrystar, here is my bumper 2-day report. Got Thursday court 1 ticket from my tennis club and I added grounds pass on Wednesday to make into a 2-day visit, staying overnight with my brother in between.

Got into the queue about 7.15am Wednesday, and got number 5600 and something, and got in about 11.45am. To begin with it was slightly boring in the queue looking at the many hours ahead, under overcast skies and with the grass wet. But it dried and the sun came out and it was pleasant enough sitting on the grass reading newspapers and chatting. It’s good that they let you sit down and move sections of the queue forward en masse, so you don’t have to shuffle forward for the most part. For anyone planning on going Saturday or Monday, if the weather isn’t too bad, I would think about 6am as being the right time to virtually guarantee a grounds pass, and probably get in early and 8am means probably getting in eventually but risky, and after play starts as well.

We went straight onto court 14 arriving to see Carla Suarez Navarro had already lost the first set to Lucic-Baroni, before recovering to win 1-6 6-3 6-3. The standard of the match was good, I thought. We then saw on the same court Benoit Paire, who beat compatriot Stephane Robert 6-4 7-5 6-4 in another good match. Paire as some of you will know is a talented player with some aggression and style. He started slowly but at the end of the first set and start of the second the match did reach a very high level for a while with some good variety. At one point Robert’s serve smacked into the middle of the net and broke it the match was stopped for about 15 minutes while a replacement metal peg was sought for!

During that match someone explained to me that they had a centre court ticket but were on court 14 avoiding Azarenka's screaming. Which was strange because I could see her being interviewed in the TV gantry at that very moment. However someone pointed out to us both that she had withdrawn.

After the Paire match my brother and I headed over to court 12 and watched Mahut against Robredo. Mahut, the lower ranked player but at home on grass, was the favourite, and started looking like it, looking the more likely arguably in set 1 with net play and aggression, before eventually losing it on a tiebreak. It was enjoyable to see net play and serve and volley at Wimbledon, however as the match wore on Robredo was starting to pick him off, and Mahut made some mistakes. In the end Robredo wrapped up a well deserved straights sets victory 7-6 6-1 7-6, looking in good shape.

Court 12 is next to court 2, and we could hear the screams of Sharapova and Michelle Larcher de Brito drifting onto our own court. The other match became more exciting than ours. De Brito had numerous match points (5?) and the scoreboard was visible; we were able to watch that and listen to the crowd reaction simultaneously to see what was going on there with our crowd reacting to that match more than our own. When de Brito won, even a small round of applause went up on our court which wasn’t appropriate or necessary, especially as Mahut and Robredo were in the middle of a point at the time!

Next we planned to get back to watch an interesting match doubles match between Dimitrov/Nielsen and Tomic/Troicki but found that it had finished already. Checking now I see Tomic/Troicki retired in the second set. We watched some of Lopez/Granollers in doubles for about 10 minutes and Miryni for about 2 minutes. On the way out, at around 7pm maybe, we stopped to see Federer’s match on Henman Hill for about 5 minutes. It’s funny how when you actually go to Wimbledon you often miss the main story more than if you had been at home, especially if you don’t have centre court tickets. We managed to watch some of the match on the underground on my brother’s iPhone though, with the finish at his flat. I may watch more of that match later if I can find it on iPlayer or youtube, to see what happened there. Amazing that I was there thinking Mahut’s defeat to Robredo shows how serve and volley struggles to work any more, and meanwhile Federer was being serve-volleyed out of the tournament by Stakhovsky. I could never have believed it.

Back the next day and entered the grounds at about 10.15, and had to wait for the grounds to be opened. I suspect it was perfectly ready and they made us wait in a crowd to 10.30 just for the sake of regulation. My Dad and I had a look at the practice courts where we had a debate about whether or not one of them was Berdych. I think it was.

We went to court 14 again for Llodra-Seppi. Court 14 seems to be the next highest in billing after 12 and 18, but is much smaller, with a capacity of perhaps 300. So when they put men’s singles on there it can get crowded. We got there at about 10.45 but already every seat was taken, with players due on court at 11.30. We got a good standing position though at the front and couldn’t have been closer without standing on the court; the view was good albeit some hassles there with people jostling a little etc.

Llodra often makes this entertaining and this was no different, another serve volley, he signalled his intent by serve volleying on second serve on the first point, which he lost. He took a 4-1 lead and the highlight of the match was his great volleys. However Seppi fought back and took the first set 7-5 before Llodra decided to retire after that, another early retirement following many the day before.

Onto court 1 and we saw Serena Williams in a high quality match against Caroline Garcia, who acquitted herself very well and was a little hard done by to lose 6-3 6-2 with a double break in each set. However, she could make no impression on Serena’s 100-120mph serve, even struggling to get it back at all at times. I bumped into snooker player Ken Doherty in the crowd and said hello to him.

By the way, I saw players slip a lot in several matches, not all of which you may have heard about, so I do definitely think there have been more slips this year.

Another thing to note was that the crowd was full at the start of Serena's match and remained full throughout (>95%), and was slightly less full in the Gasquet match (90-95%).

Next up after Serena was indeed Gasquet, who won the first 8 games against Go Soeda, and showed his class in the first 2 sets, with the backhand purring and overall game looking classy. It was a strange match, with no breaks at all in set 3, but the rest of the match had many, many breaks. There were on occasion some great shots by both. Gasquet arguably shows some mental frailties as the match got closer to the crunch before winning 6-0 6-3 6-7 6-3.

In one of the sets of this match I got up to go out after 2 games to go the toilet (I try to avoid going out at set end as then you miss 3 games) and a steward rushed up to me and had a go at me and tried to get me to sit down, but I ignored him, even when he came after me saying “you will sit down when I tell you to!”. I think this is a bit strange, as I have never had a problem going out after 2 games at many other tournaments in the UK in worldwide so I didn’t even realise that this wasn’t allowed. He should have showed more common sense given that I was on the end of the aisle about 4 rows from the exit, not near to the front of the stadium (we sat about half way back) and left in the 30 second break between games, when no play was going on. I think they are too strict and officious at Wimbledon. When I tried to get back in on another occasion an official refused to let me past as I was trying to enter through the entrance that wasn’t the one printed on the ticket. I tried to explain that this entrance was closer to my seat by far than the official one but she wouldn’t have it and made me walk back out to the next level and up a flight of stairs and ten times further around for no reason. Basically, I have a problem with authority , especially when that authority is less intelligent than myself, and especially when they follow strict rules without any allowance for common sense.

I decided we could ditch Ferrer against Bautista-Agut and headed up to the resell queue to get tickets for Laura Robson on court 2 instead. However the queue was very long and there were very few tickets available so instead we went down to court 12 to see Dolgopolov, one of my favourite players. However, at the close of the Gasquet match, slight drizzle had caused the covers to come on across the courts. Instead of watching Dolgopolov I sat on court 12 with my camera on 20x zoom focused onto the big screen on court 2, from which I was able to watch the Djokovic match sat under an umbrella. However, it became increasingly obvious there would be no play so we saw neither Ferrer, Dolgopolov or Robson in the end. We must have just missed the final announcement of play suspension as we left the ground a couple of minutes before I think.

Underground was surprisingly crowded given play was still going on in centre and people had been drifting away steadily over an hour or so. There was a 10 minute queue in the street just to get into the underground station (Southfields). I dread to think how much it would have been had everyone left the ground at once.

It was just after 7pm and I had bought an advance ticket for 10.25pm train so I went and hung out in Leicester Square for a while, and it was still drizzling there, before getting home after midnight.

All in all, decent days out, shame we didn’t see more tension and excitement and close matches although for sure plenty of quality. Good to see serve and volley still alive, although sad in a way to see it still isn’t enough at Wimbledon to defeat clay players like Robredo and Seppi.

Hope there's not too many typos in the article, I have a meeting at 2pm to close my lunch hour, so don't have time for a full read through as I want to get this out now while it's not so dated, not in the evening after work.

I'm enjoying these write ups. Thanks HB!

Sounds like you saw at least some of about 8 or 9 games?

Brilliant write up HB - really interesting to read your thoughts.

Just about to post mine!

Great to see how many of us can make it there. Glad you had a great day.

Look forward to yours, LuvSports.

Liked your write up HB. I think laverfan might give you an Oscar  

For anyone that hasn't visited it gives a good sense of how there are lots of things going on. Also if you do have tickets you really have to keep your fingers crossed for a good OOP.

When I was in the queue for return tickets they came along asking if anyone wanted court 2 tickets but there were few buyers. Also when you got to the point were you choose Centre Court or Court 1 there were few takers for Center (Despite Murray still being in the early stages of second set). Everyone wanted Court 1 so we all had to wait longer. Maybe to cheer for Nadal to lose   So getting to see what you want depends on what others choose.

I would also say it's worth being nice to the stewards. They are a valuable source of information. They can tell you if it's worth queuing or in our case when to start queuing for returns. In our case the info was spot on. When we were on Court 1 I went out between games and when I returned was fumbling in my bag for my ticket and the steward just ushered me in before I found it. I must look  I will have to try that one next time...

Henman Bill wrote: Basically, I have a problem with authority , especially when that authority is less intelligent than myself,

Ha ha! This made me laugh. I will not give the obvious response...

When I went to the resell queue they said there were very few tickets for any courts at all and there was a long queue and they were turning people away.