A Few Days In Eastbourne, Mostly For The Tennis, 25 to 29 June 2024

Leylah, you’ve got me on my knees…

Janie and I had enjoyed our time at Eastbourne so much in 2023…

…we decided to book three days of Eastbourne tennis for 2024: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Tuesday Evening

On the Tuesday evening we met Linda Wrobel (formerly Linda Phillips) for dinner. Linda lives in Bexhill, which, me being a died-in-the-wool Londoner, seemed to me to have no proximity whatsoever to Eastbourne. But last year, when I posted about our Eastbourne trip on Facebook, Linda messaged me wondering what the hell Janie and I were doing in Eastbourne without contacting and meeting Linda!

Linda first came to our Airbnb to have a look around, then we wandered round to the same Thai place that Janie and I had tried the previous year.

So deep in conversation were we, that we completely forgot top take pictures of each other or of the food. Here is a picture of Janie with the food from the previous year.

It was a very enjoyable evening with Linda.

After that, three days of tennis and picnics.

We took an infeasible number of photographs on those three days, which could do with some editing into a highlights album. If you like canonical, the 200 or so pictures are in the following album:

Wednesday

On the Wednesday we saw:

  • Sebastian Baez v Miomir Kecmanovic
  • Jelena Ostapenko v Katie Boulter;
  • Emma Raducanu v Jessica Pegula;
  • Taylor Fritz v Thiago Seyboth Wild (actually we just watched the first five games of that last one).

Here are some sample pictures from the Wednesday:

Baez serves

Kecmanovic serves

Barrista serves

It was a very hot day, that Wednesday, hence the iced coffees quite early in the day.

The Boulter bounce

The Pegula pose

The Raducanu Racket March

Fritz in the Frame

The Cyborg Wildebeest

Thursday

On the Thursday we saw:

  • Flavio Cobolli v Billy Harris,
  • Jasmine Paolini v Katie Boulter,
  • Daria Kasatkina v Emma Raducanu,
  • Taylor Fritz v Juncheng Shang (again we just watched the first five games of that last one).

Cooler and breezier, it was, on the Thursday and the Friday.

Colourful Flavio

“Cousin” Billy grey in contrast

Pocket-Rocket Paolini

Dashing Daria

Hark At these Two

We can’t wait to see Juncheng Shang (depicted) play Zhizhen Zhang (who we saw last year), if only to hear umpires and commentators trying to distinguish between the names.

Friday

On the way to the ground, Janie took some pictures along the front. She even made me park up so she could photograph the bandstand

On the Friday we saw:

  • Leylah Fernandez v Madison Keys,
  • Daria Kasatkina v Jasmine Paolini,
  • Max Purcell v Billy Harris,
Leylah…

…you’ve got me on my (Madison) Keys

Jasmine & Daria chat with Kader “Barry White” Nouni

Giving the serve Max

Eastbourne seagull – conspicuously indifferent to tennis and to being photographed.

In short, we had a really great time in Eastbourne.

You can see the results of all the matches we saw on the results centre page of the tournament website – click here.

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