Thursday, June 26, 2003  

Ah, Wimbledon. An eventful day, to say the least. And a very long post.

I've actually been to Wimbledon before, back in 2001 with my cousin Anand. It was surprisingly easy and painless. For £8, you can get in after 5pm on a Grounds Ticket to go to any court barring Centre Court and Court 1, allowing you to walk the grounds, experience the sights and sounds and catch a whole bunch of players playing on the little courts. You also get to experience the wonderful atmosphere of "Henman Hill", a grassy slope facing a huge TV screen so named for the legion of fanatical fans that gather there to cheer on Wimbledon's most popular player: Tim Henman, the only Brit with any decent chance of breaking the country's 67-year duck and winning their home tournament.



Last time around, we arrived at 5pm, saw the huge line, winced and then marvelled at the fact that it took us only thirty minutes to get in. And so when I arrived with Anand and Herbert at 3:30pm this year to see an even longer line (approximately a kilometre long, at best guess), I didn't worry too much and assured Herbert that though it will probably take a little longer than last time, it won't be TOO long. Instead, we were stuck in line for almost three hours. It just didn't move at all. This of course makes things worse, because the longer you stay in line the more you feel you HAVE to stay there, else you've wasted all your time for nothing. With British summers keeping daylight around until 9-10pm or so, there was little trouble of there being nothing to watch, but it's still somewhat aggravating to wait in line for so long and see only a couple of matches.

Though we did manage to catch more than a few matches, on a day with few must-see games we walked in just as the biggest one -- favourite Andy Roddick against Canadian-born Brit Greg Rusedski -- finished, which was a bit disappointing. Still, a brief tour of the grounds revealed much interest around Ivo Karlovic, the hiherto unknown Croat who took out reigning champion Lleyton Hewitt in the first round. Amusingly, most people were there not to marvel at his skill, but rather the fact that at 6'10", he's the tallest player on the tour ("Look! It's him! He's huge!" was an all-too-common comment). Walking away from Karlovic's match, I also got accidentally slapped by a random woman for no apparent reason, and the look of shock and horror on her face at her mistake rather made up for it.

With no real stars about, the mission I had from the start began to emerge... see Daniela Hantuchova. Hantuchova is ridiculously cute, and she can play. Naturally, she's thus dubbed the "new Anna" (Kournikova, in case you've been under a rock), though it makes no difference to me; she's cute nonetheless and has ridiculously nice legs (click here for a picture). And so the three of us went out to watch her match on Court 2. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones with that idea -- not by a long way. There was a huge line for her court, and it wasn't moving (who'd give up a spot there?). Given that her match seemed about to end, a bit of forward planning revealed that she was due next for a doubles match on Court 6. Being the sort to plan ahead, I thought we should get a good spot at Court 6 and wait for her to show up.

No sooner than we arrive at the almost-empty Court 6, where a men's doubles match was taking place under virtual anonymity than Herbert spies an allegedly cute Japanese "bird". So he goes off to hunt and do his thing, impeded somewhat by a little kid sitting in front of him making OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH noises. This was amusing for a while, but the general awkwardness of a friend "getting his groove on" (so to speak) in front of a completely dead game (well, it was alright, but it was between total unknowns and had no atmosphere) so Anand and I decided to go for another walk, since with the game still well in progress the lovely Daniela wasn't expected on for a while yet.

After another tour of anonymous games and players you've heard of but never properly seen, we happened upon another rather busy game and soon found out why: It starred the volatile but popular Jelena Dokic in a doubles match-up with Ashley Harkleroad, dubbed the "American Anna" (yes, any time any female tennis player looks remotely attractive, she's the new Anna). Aside from making for a good view, it was incredibly amusing to see men walking past, doing a double-take and snapping back to their mates jabbering "OH MY GOD WAIT IT'S ASHLEY HARKLEROAD SHE'S SO FIT!". One even motioned to get his camera and was rewarded with a huge slap from his girlfriend, right in front of me. Nice one.

After a while of that we made our way back to Court 6 to grab a seat (American Anna she may be, but Harkleroad and Dokic are not Hantuchova). Herbert rejoined us, and we soon had cause for concern. It turns out that Hantuchova could not close out her match after all and was engaging in a titantic final set with her opponent on Court 2 -- which happened to be right next to where we were on Court 6. Thus began the amusing concept of us watching one tennis match while listening intently to another on the next court, hidden behind a large brick wall. With Hantuchova's match going on (and on), it became apparent that she'll never make it down on to Court 6 for her doubles match, losing our chance to see her in the flesh. Desperate times call for desperate measures... and as the doubles match on Court 6 ended, leaving the court vacant (it's bad form to move around while someone is playing), we then tried to figure out a way to watch what was going on at Court 2. Eventually we settled on climbing to the top of the stands, scaling the wall behind the stands, and leaning back out over the seating to catch a glimpse of Hantuchova and take pictures galore. It felt vaguely stalker-ish, to be honest, but we certainly weren't the only ones doing it (hell, half of Court 3 had their backs to their own game and were watching her's). And they resulted in a bunch of rubbish photos like the one below (she's the one nearest the camera on the bottom, obviously). It also resulted in one of the most dodgy exchanges after her match (which she lost) finished.



"Damn, my right hand really hurts."

"Yeah, and my arm is tired."

Hrm...

That pretty much concluded our day; with Hantuchova out and most of the matches winding down, nothing major happened. All in all, a fun day, and an event not to be missed... I'm rather happy that I managed to catch Wimbledon again, because it's a lot of fun and something special. Everyone knows what it is -- even if they don't care about tennis or sports in general, they know of the importance of Wimbledon.

Still, I've virtually wasted a day right here -- only six days to go!

Posted at 7:58 AM

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