The art of queuing

There is no doubt that the English love a good queue. Last Saturday morning, I joined arguably the most famous queue in England - the queue for Wimbledon. This is my third year of living in Wimbledon while the championships have been on and I was pulling out all stops to get there this year!



The queue is like no other. There is even a 40 page booklet which provides a "Guide for queuing for the Championships". Basically, if you want to secure the show court tickets (i.e. Centre Court, No.1 or No.2 courts) you need to camp overnight. While it would have been great to see Nadal play, I was quite happy with having General Admission tickets which allow you to roam around the outside courts. I arrived at Wimbledon Park just after 5am and received my queuing card - #3065. It was a relaxing morning of chatting & reading the paper while we all waited for the ticket counters & gates to open. We made it inside about an hour before play commenced at midday.



Our morning kicked off on the now infamous court 18 (where the marathon match was played last week) to watch two promising single females. After a shaky start, Petra Kvitova from Czech Republic took control over the match over Victoria Azarenkawith a 7-5, 6-0 win.

Wimbledon is certainly a classy sporting venue with flowers, tidy grounds and plenty of areas to relax and enjoy the tennis and of course eat the local specialty - strawberries & cream! In the afternoon, we watched Paul-Henri Mathieu beat Thiemo DeBakker on Court 5 followed by a mixed doubles match. It was a North American fight with Lindsey Davenport & Bob Bryan being outclassed by Daniel Nestour & Bethanie Matek-Sands.

It was a superb, albeit very long day out. I highly recommend it to anyone who is in town at this time of the year!