Day out at Wimbledon tennis championship 2007
January 3, 2008
A couple more ‘event reports’ from last year…
My brother and I went on the first Friday of the Wimbledon tennis championships (6th July 2007). We’ve never been before but it was great and we’re hoping to go next year (centre court here we come ;-)).
I train’ed it up from Thatcham while Neal travelled from Croydon - guess which one of us had to get up at 4am? 
Eventually we met up at Wimbledon tube station where it started to rain, typical!
Luckily we hopped on a shuttle bus that had just turned up. It started to really chuck it down as the bus filled with people. The bus got under way but because of the stupid one-way system and major traffic jams it took us 20mins to go down the road, up, around and back on the road we started just to turn around! It did get quicker as we got closer and we finally arrived at the grounds - wow! They were excellent!
Off the bus we walked up the hill and got on the end of the already huge queue at about 8:30am. We were handed our “queue ticket” to basically say yep you’re not too late and you’ll definitely be getting in today. 2 hours later we were in the grounds!! Some tips for queuing here:-
- take a snack ‘cos you’re gonna get hungry
- make sure you go to the loo beforehand as it could be ages before you see one and
- don’t buy anything while in the queue as you’ll either be told you cannot take it in when you get to the gates or will find it cheaper inside, ie. the event guide.
We, of course, had a security check then went through the turnstiles surprisingly quickly to buy our tickets. £12.
Then we were inside proper. Bang on time for the gates to open and for a mass of people to hurl to their prime spot near a court. No centre or Court 1 seats for us - you have to be either lucky with the ballot months before the tournament or extremely early at the gates (ie. get out your tent and sleep the overnight) to buy them on the day. For us, it was the side courts.
First things first, we were both very hungry by now so grabbed some snacks and drinks from the canteen then sat and watched all these people pour in. It slowed down eventually so we got up and had a walk around.
It was packed! The walking area along the side courts were pretty narrow and we struggled to get down them a lot of the time. We got to Court 9 (ladies doubles match) but it wasn’t too long before the heavens opened up again and we all ran for cover. It chucked it down, so much so that we had to step 10 metres away from the edge of the covering as it blew in - another tip: have a good umbrella (I got one but as we were leaving - doh) and a light raincoat. As soon as it looked like it was about to stop we quickly got back to Court 9 and got seats near the middle (the net). In hindsight perhaps not the best place, I would have perhaps gone for one of the corners but we couldn’t complain. And I think we were on coaching seats but the coaches didn’t turn up do we didn’t have to move. The players soon came out for warm up then the match started proper. Great match, lots of great pics but the Germans won again, lol.
During the match, my brother said the Williams sisters walked behind us. My brother saw them but I missed them - it does help to be 6 foot plus sometimes.
Then this chap called Andy Roddick popped up on the court behind us. He was training with his coach, Jimmy Connors. At this point everyone switched over. A load of us stood up on our seats to then be shouted at to get down by one of the young stewards. Didn’t matter as by then I had loads of shots. I did get a few more from the corner.
Afterwards, we had another walk around, popping in and out of a couple more matches. We were running out of time as I had a train to catch but I made sure we got up to the ex-Henman Hill. Very cool and massive screen but you could tell there was no British player playing as the crowds were pretty quiet.
Sadly we had to leave, so after a little confusion on what was the exit we got off the grounds, round the corner and eventually back on a bus to Wimbledon station.
But as soon as we thought the day was over we saw Roger Federer doing some sort of promo in a small area in front of the station on a specially-built mini-tennis court! We weren’t 100% certain but it must have been him!
Then guess what, yep it started to rain, so as soon as I had my camera out and snapped a couple of pics, Federer stopped playing, packed up and disappeared. I guess we’ll never know…
A great day out and dreaming of getting Centre Court of Court 1 tickets for 2008 already. 
More pics of the day are here.
Wimbledon:
www.wimbledon.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Championships,_Wimbledon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Wimbledon_Championships
.photography site: squashyfrog.com
.photography blog: blog.squashyfrog.com
.flickr photostream: flickr.com/photos/koltregaskes
.deviantart gallery: koltregaskes.deviantart.com
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