This was a really super day. When we were applying for tickets, Janie and I debated long and hard about which tennis slot to attempt. I favoured No. 1 Court, as I thought it would improve our chance of success. But Janie’s theory was that she was only interested in Centre Court, as it is the only covered court and she wanted to be assured of play if we did secure tickets.
Thus we applied for quarter finals day on centre court – thus we were successful in our application.
Janie took responsibility for the sumptuous picnic and I planned the journey. We set off good and early to avoid the worst of the crowds and take in some atmosphere on arrival. I guess it was a strange mix of regular Wimbledon and London 2012 atmosphere for this tournament – but that’s “strange in a good way”.
Chapter and verse for the whole tournament Wikipedia style can be found here.
We were treated to four quarter-finals; two women’s singles and two men’s singles:
- the first match we saw was Victoria Azarenka beating Angelique Kerber, the last match of the day we saw Maria Sharapova beat Kim Clijsters – click here for women’s singles details;
- between those matches, in the men’s singles, we saw Roger Federer beat John Isner and then Novak Djokovic beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga – click here for the men’s singles details.
It was a fabulous day of tennis.
A rather strange American man was sitting next to us, who kept saying “that’s amazing…that’s incredible” whenever one of the players won a point with a good shot or when there was a good rally…which really was quite often. It turned out that the man is a huge tennis fan and goes a lot, so he shouldn’t be quite so continuously astounded by good play in my view, but there you are.
Janie realised that she had a real taste for Wimbledon, so picked up instructions for applying for forms in the Wimbledon ballot, which she has done each year since 2012 with (at the time of writing, in 2016) remarkable success, getting good No. 1 Court tickets two years out of those four. A small but significant Olympic legacy for us.