Ain't No Rest for the Weary: Wimbledon

After 1, yes 1 hour of sleep, Kevin and I arose at 03:30 to get to the Wimbledon queue. We arrived in plenty of time, queue number 1230, and waited for about 2 hours before we started moving. The queue stretched for a long, long way so we were probably in line for about another hour. Luckily they have games to pass the time, so Kevin and I volunteered to play a match of tennis against other queuers and practiced our serves, and before we knew it we were in.

The first thing you see past the entrance is centre court, which is massive, but there are 19 other courts around the grounds. The first match we watched was a doubles battle between two sets of veterans who had played at Wimbledon years before. They put on a great show for the crowd, cracking jokes and just doing silly things, while the chair judge tried in vain to correctly call the match. At one point they brought out two balls and all 4 players volleyed and later one man joined the other team and it was three against one. One player even switched with the ballboy for a couple points, and the kid slammed as hard as he could while the old veteran sprinted to collect the loose balls. 

The young ball kids were actually one of the most amusing things to watch, as they ran around spastically, stole glances at the junior girls, and acted altogether excessively formal to a point that was downright silly. But hey that's their job, that's the Wimbledon tradition, and they do it well.

At 13:00 the major match for the day began as Djokovic took to the grass to face the rising Bulgarian star Dimitrov, so Kevin and I claimed our spots on Henman Hill to watch the big match. Though I was pulling for the Djoker, 90% of the crowd cheered whenever Dimitrov scored a point, lead by a scarf swinging, "Gri-gor Dim-i-trov" chanting Bulgarian man, who was several times approached by security to no avail, as he had the crowd with him. During the 4 hour battle I enjoyed the traditional Wimbledon treat, strawberries and cream, a perfect treat on the hottest day of the year. It was a great match, momentum going back and forth, but in the end Djokovic prevailed in 4 sets, 6-4 3-6 7-6 7-6. 

In my opinion, the best match of the day, was actually a junior girls double match on court 18. They were seemingly evenly matched, and no one seemed to be able to win the critical match point, so the game continued for house and hours. I started rooting for one side, I think it was an Italian team, who seemed better teammates and team players (one also had a great scream that sounded like she was charging up to hit the ball), but in the end they fell but put up a great match. I'll definitely look out for all four players at Wimbledon in the future. 

To end the day, we saw Federer's match point to defeat Raonic in straight sets, and then head out on the tube and back to Oxford. We absolutely crashed when we got home, and enjoyed our first actually night of sleep in 3-4 days. By Kevin's estimates, he had slept 2 out of the last 55 hours so sleep was a necessity by that point. There is just too much fun things to see and do in England!