Wimbledon 2006

Well here I am living in London so what better to do in July but go to Wimbledon. So I check out the ground tickets and very reasonable I think £17 for all day and £11 after 5pm. MMM thought I might go into work early one day and leave to get there around 5:30pm. So I check out the days play and looks quite interesteing Hewitt might still be playing int eh evening. So I trek out there (It is quite a bit out of the city). I get there and the line is massive. I chat to this attendant guy and he tells me it is unlikely I will get in today and if I do there won't be any games still playing. He tells me that people have started lining up for the next day. So very disappointed I am I leave without joining the line. So I think maybe on Saturday if I get up early and join the line I am likely to get in at least by the afternoon. So on Friday one of the girls in the office says she wants to come to so we plan to arrive at Southfields tube at 8am. I make my lunch and buy bottled water (it is going to be hot believe it or not). And we get to the tube at about 8:15. It takes us half an our to walk to the back of the line.

But from then on we shuffle the whole time to the gate finally getting in at about 11:15am (I didn't think that was too bad actually). We buy our program and go and sit in Court 3. No one is playing at this point as games don't start til 12 noon. But Hewitt is due next door as the second match. So we are sitting there looking at what is on each court and there seems to be a crowd on court 10 but it isn't listed in the program. I can just see a head over the wall in the distance and I think "that looks like Raphael Nadal" (Who can mistake those locks). So we make a run over there and how good is my vision - Raphael is warming up for his match against Agassi!!!! And I have to say for a 20 year old he is definitley no boy!!!! And much hoter in person than on TV!!!

So we watched him for a while and he eventually finishes about 1 hr before his match and we wait to see who else comes out - Ancic.

Well we have found a little gem here. But Hewitt will be on soon and we want to see if we can get into standing room. So we wait for Ancic to leave - get him to sign our program, have a squiz at Grosjean's warmup briefly then head to court 2.

No chance of getting in to see Hewitt. There are about 200 people waiting to get into standing room and it is already full. So we try court 3 to look over the back - all full. Ah well we decide to go to the hill adn watch the Agassi V Nadal game - which I think would be a better match anyway. So we sit on the hill in the blazing sun and try not to slide down it.

It was a good match but Agassi just not up for it. We stayed and watched the end of the Hewitt match on the screen before heading to line up for Centre Court tickets.

Murray is going to play Roddick last this evening and we would love to get in for that one. We are told that there is a good chance of getting a ticket today as it is very hot and the football is on with England playing Portugal at 4pm. So we line up and we line up and we line up. The match we want starts but we can see the big screen from the line so we wait and wait and finally we get tickets - only £5 for charity. We finally get in to see the second 2 sets of the match - I can't believe I got into centre court of Wimbledon for a 5er!!!!!

Well it was a great day and really hot and I got a tan!!!!!