I queued at Wimbledon '96
Date: 1996/07/17
rec.sport.tennis
And I got the sticker to prove it!
Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans, and all that.
I had been *planning* to attend several days of Wimbledon as the guest of
one of the players ... and had envisioned myself breezing through the
front gates, disinterestedly flashing my player pass at the deferential
sentry. Unfortunately, the girl I had been traveling to see (Lindsay Lee,
from here in Atlanta) seriously injured her shoulder in her French Open
loss against Julie Halard-Decugis (a match I feel sure she would otherwise
have won, having taken the first set 6-2) and had to withdraw from first
Eastbourne then Wimbledon. More specifically, she has been diagnosed as
having a rotator cuff tear, is presently receiving electrical stimulation
therapy, and has been told she won't be able to play again until later
this summer, in Canada, if the therapy progresses as hoped. What a tough
break.
Being forced to miss a Grand Slam, especially Wimbledon, is a
disappointment for *any* player (Muster and Rios aside), but it must be
especially devastating for the young, lower-tier player like Lindsay (who
is ranked in the mid-40s this week, BTW) ... not only because Grand Slams
are still a big deal to them, but also because of the lost income Wimbledon is obviously very lucrative, even if you lose in the early
rounds) and the lost opportunity to compete in a big situation against the
top players. Oh, well ... she's only 18 and otherwise as healthy as a
horse, so here's hoping she can, in fact, return in Toronto, in form.
So, needless to say, my Wimbledon experience changed accordingly. I hooked
up as planned with r.s.t. lurker, Adam, who had driven down from
Lincolnshire, and we decided to do things the old-fashioned way, to stand
in line for hours with the plebs and hope for the best. (Adam,
incidentally, is at university studying town planning, is single, and
fancies girls who look like Steffi Graf ... or is that girls who earn as
much money as Steff? Anyway, all interested parties should forward their
headshots and resumes to me and I'll see that Adam gets the best of the
lot :-)
Adam met me at my Hampton Wick hotel at 4:45 A.M. (that's in the
morning, y'all) on Tuesday the 25th, the second day of play, and we ran
around the corner to the train station to catch the 4:59 to Wimbledon,
made it, and arrived in about 10 minutes. We had gone prepared to walk the
30 minutes or so from the train station to the Church Street queue, but
were pleased to find a trusty chunky black London cab idling right outside
the train station. (This is the same sort of cab that rising British star
Luke Mulligan's father drives, BTW, and is the mode of transportation that
the entire Mulligan family took to watch young Mulligan in his match
agasint Tim Henman. Much was made of this in the press, as Henman, *the*
British star right now, comes from a wealthy and pedigreed background.)
Three other guys who were getting off the train with us, also heading for Wimbledon and also eying the cab, struck up an animated discussion as to
whether they should spring for cab fare or just walk. The cabbie solved
the dilemma for us all be leaning out the window and saying, "Mates, I'll
take the 5 of you for 1 pound each." One pound? Sure thing! We all
clambered in and were at the All England Club before we were even settled
in properly. The Timex read 5:15 when we reached our place at the end of
the line ... pretty impressive clocking, IMO, and the half hour or so that
we saved by taking the taxi proved to be essential as streams of people
poured in behind us. By 6 a.m., the line had filled out all the way down
the sidewalk behind us and had looped across the street. By 9:15, when a
dapper old fellow with a straw hat and seersucker jacket came by to warn
us that the door to the club would open at 10 and that we should be
prepared to press forward in line soon, the queue had grown immense; in
fact the end had long ago disappeared from sight (and this was just one of
two queues forming!).
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