WIMBLEDON…. Some dreams do come true!

It was late in the evening and young sensation Rafael Nadal was just walking back after yet another superb performance which saw him win the match in straight sets! He approached towards our section of the crowd and suddenly, was right in front of me!

Me: Nadal! Autograph please! Congrats Nadal, that was awesome tennis. You are a champion in grass court too.

Nadal: Thanks guys.. thanks for your support.

Me: Nadal!! I am from Chennai. I don’t think you will remember me… I had in fact taken a picture with you during this year’s Chennai Open. The day before your semi-finals match I met you while you were training in one of the practice courts?

Nadal: Is it!!! Sorry I don’t remember. I enjoyed my stay in Chennai. You people love sports and it’s good to see you here.

Me: Oh I never thought that I will meet you again and that too in Wimbledon. Thanks for the autograph and all the very best for the final match!!

Nadal: Thanks for your support. BYE!!!

Me: Wow Rajee [my wife]!!! what a day we are having! I never thought that we would get a ticket and never thought that we will end up meeting Nadal at the centre court. This is like a dream for me!!!!!

Rajee: Yes it’s like a dream for you and in fact it is a dream!!! Get up now, the time is already 5.30 AM and you need to catch the 6.00 AM train for the Wimbledon!

OOPS!!! That was a dream. Yes my wife Rajee shattered my dream and woke me up on the D-Day morning that I had planned to visit Wimbledon.

Wimbledon! This is the tournament that every tennis player dreams to be a part of and this is the tournament which every tennis lover would love to watch. I was lucky enough to visit UK for a project assignment while the Wimbledon spectacle was going to happen. I being a sports freak believed that missing watching Wimbledon would be a crime! Luckily my colleagues Monish and Jagan also had the same passion for the game, so we all grouped together and planned to make this a reality.

All we knew was that getting a ticket at Wimbledon was a nightmare. But still we googled and got enough information. We came to know that getting a ticket in Centre court is impossible. All the tickets were sold out much before the tournament and we couldn’t afford to get the tickets which were sold by the third party. The ticket ranged between 2500 to 3500 pounds. With this money I would have conducted my own tennis tournament in India… naming it SATHYA OPEN! This way I would have made my father very proud and happy. My father is also a great tennis fan, a regular visitor of the Chennai Open tournament. He has a 100 % attendance record at the Chennai open, following it from day 1 of the tournament, way back in 1997 till date. He knows each and every player who played in that tournament. Unfortunately none of the players know about my father :)

He was very desperate that I should watch Wimbledon at any cost.


Coming back to Wimbledon, we came to know that we can still buy premium tickets on the day of play. Approximately 500 tickets daily for each of the Centre (except for the last 4 days), No.1 and No.2 Courts are reserved for sale at the turnstiles.
Roughly 6000 Ground Admission tickets are available each day for entry to the Grounds, including the No.2 Court standing enclosure and unreserved seating and standing on Courts 3–19. This number may vary depending on the number of people already in the grounds, the number of courts in play and the weather

To get this ticket we need to join the queue. For a ground pass it is usually necessary to join the queue several hours before the grounds open. For a show court ticket many people choose to queue overnight to maximise their chances of being able to purchase a ticket for Centre, No.1 or No.2 Court.

We were confident that we will at least get ground Admission tickets from Court 2. If lady luck favours we may get a ticket at Court1 too. We clearly made up our mind that even though if we fail to get the tickets we will at least feel the atmosphere and watch the match on the Giant screen which is known as the Henman hill. We at least wanted to experience that.

We all decided to go on a Saturday. Unfortunately the first Saturday of the tournament will be the most crowded ones. We did not have any options since our project commitments did not allow us to plan on a weekday. We had decided to take public transport since taking a car is not a good options since the traffic can be very heavy and car parking is strictly limited. Moreover we didn’t have a car :)

The match starts at 12 noon and we had planned to join the queues around 7 AM. This we thought will give us a good chance of getting tickets. I left my home around 6 AM in the morning. My wife waved her hand in a happy mood with the belief that I would be having a good day and also because she would be having a good day on my absence :)

Monish and Jagan joined me in the Guildford Railway station and we caught the 6.02 AM train. We reached Wimbledon station around 6.50 AM and reached the stadium at 7.00 AM by boarding the shuttle service available from the station.

The shuttle service took us to a place which is near to the queue. We got down from the shuttle and the steward’s greeted every one and briefed the public regarding the facilities available in the stadium and the route to the ticket queue. We started walking towards the queue. As we walked towards, we saw some 100 people marching towards the stadium escorted by the cops. We thought we can quickly go and join them. When we took a curve, we couldn’t able to believe the scene. There were around 4500 people standing in the same queue. Hello and Welcome to Wimbledon!!!

We saw each other’s face and started laughing. None of us have seen such a big queue in a single sight in our life. We don’t know how to react. We were stunned, but our legs started moving towards the queue and finally we reached the queue. The queue was made beside the big car parking area, where in we can see the entire people who are standing in the queue. The queue was divided into rows, where in each row can occupy around 800 people. After some time, the stewards gave us a queue number, our number was 04844, 04845 and 04846. We asked the stewards the possibility of us getting tickets. She answered with a smile and said that no worries you people will get the ground pass tickets for sure but not the tickets for the centre court and court 1. She gave the statistics that till queue no 8000 people will get a ground pass tickets. That gave us a relief and a confidence that we will see the spectacle. We came to know that the all the counters will open around 10.30 AM and till that the queue will not move further. We were able to see all activities happening on the queue. People were sleeping, playing cards, listening to music, reading book, playing football, playing cricket and sharing there previous queue experience. For the first one hour there was no movement on the queue, after that it started moving in a face where in it will lose to a tortoise’s speed.

At around 10.30 the queue started moving at a steady pace. On the way to the ground, people were giving us a cup of strawberries; it seems strawberries are so famous in Wimbledon, that every year about 27000 kilos of strawberries are eaten here, together with 7000 litres of cream. Since it was a sunny day, people started giving sun creams for free (to market their brands). As we moved further we entered the security check. This check was similar to the one which happens at the airport.

Finally we reached the ticket counter; we enquired whether tickets were available for the centre court or court 1, but as expected it was unavailable and we bought the ground admission ticket. Each ticket cost 20 pounds. We quickly entered the stadium and went near the place where the order of play been listed at each ground. We analysed and we had our schedules and we planned our matches accordingly.

1. Gentlemen's Singles - 3rd Round – Court 3 - Rainer Schuettler (GER) Vs Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (ESP)

We wanted to watch this since Rainer Schuettler is a professional tennis player who is in the circuit for the past 10 years. Before this match he had defeated James Blake of US in straights sets. So watching him in action should be a good start for us.

2. Ladies' Doubles - 2nd Round – Court 4 - Sania Mirza (IND)/Bethanie Mattek (USA)/ Vs Maria Kirilenko (RUS)/Flavia Pennetta (ITA)

Do we need a reason for this? Of course! An Indian player is involved in this match!

3. Gentlemen's Singles - 3rd Round – Court 2 -
Mikhail Youzhny (RUS) Vs Radek Stepanek (CZE)

We wanted to watch this match very badly. We choose this as the match of the day for us. Both are equally talented players. Mikhail Youzhny is a new star in making and Stepanek is a solid player. Youzhny's had defeated both Nadal and Federer recently. After that defeat people thought that Federer is now beatable. The Federer fear factor had come down in the year 2007

4. Mixed doubles - 2nd Round - Court 11
Mahesh Bhupathi /Sania Mirza Vs Igor Andreev (RUS)/Maria Kirilenko (RUS)

Mixed doubles specialist Mahesh Bhupathi is playing in this match along with Sania..WOW what a pick! This should be a good finish for us. Remember Mahesh Bhupathi had won the most number of Mixed doubles Grand slam title with different partners. In fact he had won 6 titles with 6 different partners. The list goes like this… French Open with Rika Hiraki (Hiraki was the first Japanese woman to win a Grand Slam tournament). U.S Open with Ai Sugiyama and Daniela Hantuchová. Australian open with Martina Hingis and Wimbleton with Elena Likhovtseva and Mary Pierce. Can he achieve that feat with Sania? That would be 7 titles with 7 different partners. With whom will he pair for next year? Hope he pairs with an Indian at least in the Mixed doubles.

The above was our list and also we decided that in between we will sneak a look on other courts to watch other stars. Remember all these matches we need to watch in standings, if luck permits we may get a seat to sit. So let’s go!!

Our first match experience: Schuettler (GER) Vs Lopez (ESP)

The match was supposed to start at 12 noon and we reached the court 3 around 11.40 AM. Luckily we got a place in the first row to stand. In that 20 minutes gap we admired the beauty of the environment, the crowd, the grass on the court, the ball boys, and the lines men. We took our cameras and took some quick snaps. Then came the players been cheered by the crowds. Lopez who is a good player in clay courts, played as tough he is playing in a French Open. There were no serve and volley or drops, both played from the base lines. This was not the game to be played in Wimbledon. This is the place where tennis is played at the best. People displayed all their talents at this tournament. Who will forget Boris Becker’s drive behind the nets, Stefan Edberg’s serve and volley, Goran Ivanišević big aces, Agassi’s great returns, Steffi Graf’s fore-hand, John McEnroe on-court behaviour, Ivan Lendl nightmare of not wining this title, Sampras elegance and his big aces during the break points, Federer’s one hand back hand flick down the line…and the list continuous… Who will forget Martina Navratilova’s passion and hunger to play and win the Wimbledon title, 20 times she had crowned the title, 9 singles,7 doubles, 4 mixed doubles, she appeared for continuous 31 years. She was aged 50 when she won her last title at Wimbledon… WOW unbelievable record and truly a living legend. Wimbledon is all about history and that’s why this is been the number 1 of all the grand’s slam.

We were not that impressed with this match and we decided that we will move on to the next match after watching the first set. Schuettler won the match easily by 6-2, 6-3, 6-4

Sania’s Doubles match: This match happened at court 4 which is very next to court 3. We went much before this match to get a proper seat and we luckily got a place to sit. Now came the crowd, all the Indians were heading towards this ground to watch this match. With lot of cheer from the Indians, Sania entered the ground. Around 1000 snaps would have been taken during the course of this match. One guy who is sitting near to me took only photos and eventually he never watched the match :). Sania as usual started the match with a struggle. She couldn’t able to hold her serve. Her new partner Bethanie Mattek was too good, I meant her game :) she played solid tennis and with her talent Sania could manage to win the first set by 6-3. Sania got into the rhythm in the second set and played some good fore-hands down the line. They gelled together and won the second set and eventually the match by 6-3, 6-4. Even though it was a straight set victory, there were more rallies being played. With her new partner I guess this pair can go all the way to the finals. Around 301 people watched this match and in that, 300 were Indians. The odd man out was Dusan Vemic who was supporting his mixed doubles partner Pennetta. He was standing next to me and was supporting them. Finally we saw some good quality tennis been played. Doubles match is always fun to watch since it is action packed.


Lunch break and the next match:
The time was 2.30 PM, it was so sunny and we were tired too. We wanted to have lunch and relax for some time. We headed over to food courts. There also we had queue. Which ever place you go in the stadium, a disciplined queue will welcome you. We brought some sandwich, pizza and some cool drinks and started to roam around the stadium. We went to the Wimbledon shopping and shopped couple of things as a remembrance. We charged our self and got ready for the second half of the day. We headed towards Court 2 to watch the big match between Mikhail Youzhny Vs Radek Stepanek on the way to our surprise we met Mahesh Bhupathi. We took autographs and took a snap with him. By the time we reached Court 2, it was fully packed. This court is called as the Graveyard of courts due to its reputation as the court on which many seeded players has been eliminated during the early rounds. Famous players who have lost on the Graveyard during early round play include Joe Creedon, Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Martina Hingis, Venus Williams, and Serena Williams. We tried our best and finally we got into the Court, but we were not able to get a good view. This made us to think on some other options. We decided to watch this match from Court 3. Yes from the last row of court 3, you can watch the match on Court 2. We quickly went to Court 3. But people were cleverer. By the time we reached, the last row was jam packed. We had patience; we waited for some one to get out from the row. After 20 minutes some people left the row and we rushed into the last row. We settled and got a very good view. The match started and to our no surprise some quality tennis has been played from the beginning. There were good servers, good volleys, good drops and overall a good competitive tennis. The first set took some time to get over has there were more break points opportunity available for both players. In the end
Youzhny won the first set by 7-5. We wanted to leave this much at that instance and as planned we want to watch the Bhupathi/sania match completely. So we decided to head towards court 11.

Bhupathi/Sania Match:
Court 11 was jam packed at that time since Safina match was progressing. We waited for that match to get over. Once the match got over, most of the people left the ground. Court 11 was too good. We had around 500 seats available for people to sit and watch the match. We choose a good view and we were all ready for the match. To our surprise we came to know that the there is one more men’s singles match before the mixed doubles match. We had no options, we decided to sit and watch that match too. It was a match between Marin Cilic (CRO) Vs Paul-Henri Mathieu (FRA). Slowly the Indian crowd started to fill in the stadium. After some time we noticed that many of the Indians has started leaving the stadium. This gave us a doubt on whether the next match can happen at this ground since the time was around 6.30 PM. We went and asked the stewards and we came to know that Sania’s match have been changed to Court 19. We immediately left the court and headed toward court 19. By the time we reached, it was jam packed. No place to stand also. As usual we choose the next court (18), this time it’s an aerial view. But we had a seat to sit and watch the match comfortably. By the time we settled the first set was almost over. It went into the tie-breaker. Sania and Mahesh were not playing well. There was no coordination between them. Sania struggled with her service and eventually they lost the first set by 6-7(4). They continued the same form in the second set. They got broken early in the set. We were more disappointed with their effect. We wanted to move on to the next match even before the match is over.

Turning Point:

The turning point didn’t happen to Sania/Mahesh but it had happened to us. Yes, while we were heading toward court 18 we came to see a huge queue at the re-sale counter. What’s re-sale counter? Well this is the counter where people can give there center court and court 1 tickets for re-sale. People who leave the stadium much early can hand-over the tickets at the re-sale counter. The tickets are then re-sold to the public who had got the ground admission for a flat 5 pounds rate. The money being generated by this re-sale will go to the charity. Well what a concept. This concept will work only if people hand over the ticket to re-sale counter. Since the re-sale queue for the center court was soooo huge, we thought we won’t get the chance. Also our legs do not have that strength to stand in the big queue around 7.30 PM. So we decided to watch the Sania/Mahesh match. Since that match was not that interesting, I told our guys that we will try to get the re-sale ticket on court 1 were Leander Paes & Rennae Stubbs is playing against Jonas Bjorkman & Alicia Molik. Leander pair lost the first set but had won the second set. We wanted to watch at least the final set. So we quickly headed towards the re-sale counter for court 1.

Jackpot: Icing on the cake:
To our surprise the center court queue was moving very fast. There were only 50 people standing before us in the queue. We then decided that we will ourselves give a chance by getting into this queue. In the mean time we checked the status on the center court via the Giant screen. Nadal Vs Keifer match was going on. Nadal is about to win the second set and the time was 8.00 PM. We have around 1 hr and 30 minutes of Play left for the day. The play can stop at 9.30 PM due to bad light. So if we are lucky we may get a chance to watch the third set in the center court for an hour. We were so excited we badly wanted to get a glimpse of the center court even if it’s for 10 minutes or so. The queue started to move fast, we were too excited. Our dream is going to become a reality in 5 or 10 minutes. We got a new energy; all our tiredness and pain had gone in seconds. Finally a Gentleman rushed to the queue and issues us 3 tickets for 15 pounds. Can you believe this? We can’t able to believe our eyes. A center court ticket for 5 pounds!!! We will never forget the 3 unknown people who had returned the tickets at the re-sale counter. 3 of us got 3 different tickets, one at north gate, other two at the south gate. We started running towards the centre court. We planned that we all met-up around 9.30 PM at a place where we shopped.
In next 120 seconds we were at our respective place in the center court. I had to wait for 5 minutes to get into the seat as the game was in process. That 5 minute I relaxed and took a long breath. I heard the sound, Game Nadal..Nadal leads 5-2 and the first set by 7-6. The steward opened the rope and allowed to me quickly take my seat which at the T row number 399. I went and sat in my seat and from then to the next 1 hour it’s a dream for me. There were unbelievable scenes, the center court was amazing, next 10 minutes I was admiring the center court rather than the match. Then I was remembered that I need to watch the match. Nadal was serving for the second set and in no time he won the second set. Now I have one set left and I can concentrate on watching the match.

Unforgettable third set in a tennis match:

The third set between Nadal and Keifer will remain in memories forever. Nadal started to serve and he holds his first game in the third set with ease. Then Keifer started with his serve. Nadal who is adapting well to the grass court showed his class and power. Keifer was not able to match Nadal’s power and placement. He easily broke Keifer in his first game. The same happened in Keifer’s next game. Nadal was leading 4-0 in the set. It was fun watching the court challenge being raised by Keifer. What’s a court challenge? Well a player can challenge against the lines men call. This is like our third-umpire decision in cricket. The challenge will be shown on the TV and based on that the chair-umpire will take decision. Whenever the challenge is shown on the TV, the crowd used to synchronize their noise according to the ball movement. Keifer used all this challenge in the first few games and he had no more challenge left with him. Suddenly Keifer got a new energy, he broke Nadal’s serve. The crowd started supporting Keifer, after all they wanted to see one more set of action. Keifer then fired some quick aces and hold his serve. The score was 4-2 at that movement. Keifer never gave up and was fighting till the end. Nadal held up his serve with some good quality tennis. Some of his shorts are unbelievable. Whenever a rally lasts more than 5 shorts then you be sure that Nadal will win that point in the end. He is the master in rallies, he will keep giving you the returns and all of a sudden he will find a placement with amazing power.

Keifer again fired some quick aces and hold his serve. He fired 5 aces in his previous two games, he was pumped up. The score was 5-3, now Nadal will serve for third set and eventually for the match. Nadal kept his clam and played consistently well to take the set and the match. The match got over by 9.00 PM, and with that our dream day ended at Wimbledon. Until 7.45 PM we never thought that we will get an opportunity to visit the centre court. Three cheers to the Wimbledon organizers, they made our dream and many of the tennis fans dream a reality by incorporating the daily tickets concept with a well managed queue mechanism. The re-sale of ticket gave us an opportunity to visit the centre court.

The photo gallery is available at the below URL

http://picasaweb.google.com/dinakar.97/WimbledonAlbum

In the end it was Game, Set, and Match to our passion and patience!!!