Janie and I had enjoyed our time at Eastbourne so much in 2024…
…we decided to book the same three days of Eastbourne tennis for 2026: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Tuesday Evening
On the Tuesday evening, we met up with Linda Wrobel (formerly Linda Phillips) and her friend Yasmin for dinner. Yasmin was a very close friend of the late great Mark Phillips, Linda’s cousin. Linda and Yasmin became good friends in the wake of Mark’s illness and demise, nearly two years ago now.
Linda judged correctly that we would all enjoy each other’s company. Yasmin had been in town for the first couple of days of the Eastbourne tennis. Janie and I enquired about the comfort levels (or lack thereof) at Devonshire Park, given the unseasonal heatwave – the hottest June temperatures since records began.
Brutal, to be honest…
…said Yasmin. We wanted honesty, even though that answer wasn’t exactly what we wanted to hear.
We ate in the Thai restaurant in Sovereign Harbour. Same place as last time with Linda, but on this occasion, with the weather so hot, we ate in their outdoor harbour area which was a very pleasant temperature for evening dining.
It probably helped that England were playing a World Cup football match at the appointed hour – we could sit wherever we liked. Linda’s quite keen on football, but I sense that we didn’t miss much by missing that match.
Wednesday 24 June 2026 At Devonshire Park
We were on Centre Court, so we saw:
- Jessica Bouzas Maneiro v Madison Keys
- Jelena Ostapenko v Panna Udvardy
- Felix Gill v Jan Choinski
- Jack Draper v Jack Pinnington Jones
But we couldn’t sit in the sun for long periods – we normally wander quite a lot anyway – so we did a fair amount of shade-seeking walking around.
In so doing we found a shady spot in the walkway between Centre Court and Court Number One, where we caught glimpses of Toby Samuel and Arthur Fery playing their matches.
We also spent a bit of time on Court Two – especially once there was a bit of breeze and shade on one side. There we saw a bit of:
- McCartney Kessler v Anhelina Kalinina
- Gabriel Diallo v Tomas Martin Etcheverry
Here’s a link to that day’s results.
We had a great day. And we were all set to come back and do some more tomorrow.
Thursday 25 June 2026 At Devonshire Park
Centre Court again, so we saw:
- Jelena Ostapenko v Zeynep Sonmez
- McCartney Kessler v Madison Keys
- Jack Draper v Gabriel Diallo
You can have too much of a good thing, so we decided to skip the fourth match on centre court and let our tickets be sold as charity returns for that match: Ugo Humbert v Quentin Halys.
Here’s the results sheet from this day.
Friday 26 June 2026 At Devonshire Park
Semi-finals day on Centre Court. We saw:
- Tatjana Maria v Jelena Ostapenko
- Petra Marcinko v Madison Keys
- Zizou Bergs v Toby Samuel
- Jack Draper v Ugo Humbert
It wasn’t quite so hot today and indeed we even had a little rain, briefly, after Tatjana Maria won the first set, which led to Jelena Ostapenko retiring.
During the retirement interval, I guessed that Jack Draper might have gone for his warm up and guessed correctly. Janie was well pleased as she had been hoping to see it.
Then another abbreviated match, as Petra Marcinko also retired after losing one set to Madison Keys:
Then an epic: Zizou Bergs v Toby Samuel:
Toby was doing great until we abandoned him, in order to have one last iced coffee and stretch our legs. It all went horribly wrong for wildcard Brit Toby while we were away.
Would Jack Draper fare any better against Ugo Humbert?
Oh well, never mind. We’d had a great time.
Here are the results from semi-finals day.
Homeward Bound – 27 June 2026
We left our lovely AirBnB quite early the next morning – but not early enough to avoid heavy traffic on the M25, followed by a sweltering afternoon & evening in London.
Still, we’d had a great time, so the journey for sure was worth it.
In the unlikely event that you want to see all the pictures – and there were plenty – click the Flickr link here or below:
