In the past decade, Janie and I have been incredibly lucky scoring good tickets for Wimbledon in the ballot. Many good days, including quarter finals days and semi finals days. But until now, we have never attended a finals day.
It seems to be my year in this “finals” respect. A few weeks ago I was able to report a first in the matter of me getting to a final playing tennis, albeit the real variety and albeit at Queen’s:
Much as the Queen’s tournament described above was a mixed doubles affair (in that case, mixed ability i.e. handicap doubles), I am talking about Wimbledon’s new idea to hold the Mixed Doubles Final on Ladies Semi-Final day.
In truth, it wasn’t until a couple of days before we went that it occurred to me that I had inadvertently scored a brace of tickets for a finals day. It was a nice surprise when we found out. It became even more of a pleasant surprise when we learnt that Neal Skupski & Desirae Krawczyk would be appearing in that final.
But let us start from the beginning of a truly magical day.
We like to get to Wimbledon reasonably early on such a day to see some smaller court stuff before the grand event. On this occasion we managed to get to the Wimbledon campus about 11:45, giving us nearly two hours to take a look around.
First up we wanted to see, on Court 12, the infeasibly named Kilian Feldbausch of Switzerland against the equally infeasibly named Mili Poljicak of Croatia.
We’d missed the first set, which the Swiss lad had won convincingly, but Mili turned it all around in sets two and three, looking very convincing indeed. News update: Mili went on to win the entire Boys tournament.
Mili Poljicak: crazy name, crazy guy – remember where you heard the name first.
Next, we wandered across to No. 2 Court to take a look at a young American named Liv Hovde against a German girl named Ella Seidel.
Liv Hovde played really well to win her first set and indeed (it turns out) went on to win not only the match but the entire Girls tournament.
It transpired that we were sitting very close to Liv’s coach, whom Liv was ignoring throughout the set, so we tried to engage him in some motivational pleasantries as we departed, but he did not seem to be an especially communicative chap. Alejandro Garcia Cenzano he’s called, which, together with my new-found Rossiter family connection, made me think of this corny commercial – click here.
Remember where you heard the name first…Liv Hovde I mean.
Next, we popped in to No. 3 Court to see a few minutes of Czech girl Linda Klimovikova against promising Brit Jasmine Conway.
We saw Jasmine win the first set, by which time we needed to get across to Centre Court for the start of the semi-finals. A steward asked us why we were leaving so soon. We explained. He said…
thank you for slumming it for a while with us here on No. 3 Court,
…which I thought was pretty funny.
On the way to Centre Court we ran into Mats Wilander, Àlex Corretja & Barbara Schett; Daisy was keen to snap them.
First up, Ons Jabeur against Tatjana Maria. Those two are incredibly close friends, by all accounts, which made their embrace and the interview with the victorious Ons after the match especially moving.
Snacking on nuts and fruit only gets you so far at this stage of the day – it was “out with the trout” time:
Elena Rybakina, surprisingly (to us) blew away Simona Halep. Meanwhile, Matthew Ebden, one of the Mixed Doubles finalists, had only just finished his Gentlemen’s Doubles five-set-epic semi-final on No. 1 Court, so while he got some well-deserved rest, the authorities laid on some Invitation Mixed Doubles to keep the crowd entertained.
Todd Woodbridge & Cara Black verses the evergreen Mansour Bahrami and Conchita Martinez. Some people love this exhibition stuff. I tire of it quite quickly and in any case needed to move my legs and butt, so I decided to go for a stroll after a short while.
On my stroll, I watched the end of an Under 14’s girls match between young Brit Isabelle Britton and young Algerian Maria Badache.
It did not go well for Maria. Isabelle looks very promising.
Then on to Court 8 to see the end of Arabella Loftus (GB) against Marianne Angel of Mexico.
By the time I got back to Centre Court, the Old Git Doubles was also close to the handshake moment and we started to feel the buzz for the Mixed Doubles Final.
Those enormous strawberries all had to go.
Soon enough came the winning moment – Skupski & Krawczyk were to be the champions.
It was a long day – over all too quickly. Daisy snapped the headline picture and the one below as we left in the late evening sunshine, which sort-of sums up the Wimbledon vibe.
