Throwback: Wimbledon 2011

Seeing as how it is currently Wimbledon season, I thought I would do a throwback to Wimbledon 2011. When we went on our trip, one of the things we wanted to do was attend some tennis tournaments. CS is a huge tennis fan and so am I, and since we were in Europe we decided we had to take the opportunity to catch Roland Garros and Wimbledon. We also managed to catch the quarterfinals of Monte Carlo, which was amazing partly cos of its wonderful location.  

In any case, this post is about Wimbledon. Unlike other grand slams where you just buy your tickets online, Wimbledon has a balloting system for tickets where each household can submit their application to try for the ballot. We weren't lucky with balloting and thought that was the end of it, luckily we realised they also have a queue system where anyone can queue for tickets to have a chance to catch a match on Centre Court, Court 1 and Court 2. There are limited tickets available for each court so if you desperately want to watch a certain match, you would need to arrive early to ensure your place in the queue. The Queue (yes in capital letters) is so famous it has its own Twitter account, there is also a good write-up on Guardian about it. 

The day we decided to queue happened to be 2nd Monday, and as Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal were on Centre Court, there were some diehard British fans who started queuing since Thursday night for Monday's tickets! We arrived in London early Sunday morning and quickly set off for the queue. We had bought a cheap 2-men tent in preparation for the queue, equipped with our tent and a fully charged iPad, we set off for Wimbledon. The tube journey took forever and it was interesting to be in a part of London that was very residential. We were rather lucky that the day we queued was a lovely sunny day as the entire week before was raining like mad. When we arrived we were informed that our queue number would place us on Court 1, obviously there was no chance that we could have gotten on Centre Court since people have been queuing since Thursday so we were rather thankful that we got Court 1.

We quickly set up our tent and started exploring the place. As it was a sunny day, most of the people in the queue were out playing games or chilling just outside their tents, reading, sunbathing etc. We have never camped before and it was an interesting experience. The Queue was really well-organised with stewards around to ensure everything was in order. There were also toilets in the park so that was another thing being taken care of. I remember there was a group of Japanese housewives who were fully equipped with all sorts of sun-protection accessories and brought their own bento meals. There were also other campers who came equipped with air mattresses and portable stoves and cooked their own meals. As it was really quite hot that day, we spent most of the day hidden in the cool shade of our tent. I can't really remember what we did but I do remember watching The King's Speech. As we didn't bring any food with us except for a few light snacks we were grateful that there were local businesses that delivers food to the area. 

all the tents nicely lined up

By about 10pm, the stewards went around to make sure everyone is in place and to ask everyone to settle down to sleep. As Wimbledon is a residential area, the Wimbledon organisers try to minimise the disruption to the residents. Although it was quite hot in the daytime, temperatures drop quite a lot at night and I remember feeling quite cold. As we were sleeping in the tent with no sleeping bags, it was also rather uncomfortable and we took quite a while to settle down.

We woke up early the next day as we wanted to beat the queue at the toilets as well as the left luggage facility. We are not allowed to bring in bulky items or items which are considered advertising so we had to pack up our tents and deposit them at the left luggage facility. After doing all that, the queue finally started moving and we got really excited about finally getting into Wimbledon. 

Beautiful morning, all getting ready for matches!

Right before entering the grounds, there was one final security check, which I have to say was very thorough, it was like going through the airport security checks! After the final security check, we bought our tickets and were really lucky to be able to get 2nd row court side seats!

Court 1, 2nd Row

We entered the grounds really early as they had to usher us in first and then let the people who are queuing for grounds admission in (as you can see, the Brits are really big on queuing). We had a lot of time to kill before the matches started so we explored the grounds and as a Wimbledon tradition, got our strawberries and cream!

Henmen Hill or Murray Mount?

Strawberries and Cream, Sir?

The order of play for Court 1 that day was 

Marion Bartoli vs Serena Williams

Novak Djokovic vs Michael Llodra

Roger Federer vs Mikhail Youzhny

Wimbledon Champion Bartoli

Champion in the making Djokovic

Outgoing Champion Federer

As we were sitting so close to them, it was quite interesting to observe the players up close. Marion Bartoli's quirks are even more obvious and Serena William's screams are scarier.  Back in 2011, Djokovic was not the player he is today, he was good then but Llodra didn't play that well either. By the time Federer came on court,  I was super sleepy cos I couldn't sleep the night before. We're not fans of his so we left and went out for a short walk around the grounds. We did go back after a while to finish the match though.

Azarenka strolling by with her iPod

We all remember this match which went on and on and on.........

All in all it was a really fantastic experience for a tennis fan. The queuing, being up close on Court 1, watching the players in such close proximity, wandering around the Wimbledon grounds. Definitely a must-try in a lifetime for tennis fans. 

Roland Garros Preview

We set off bright and early forthe Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters. One of the plans for the trip was to attend major tennis tournaments and Monte Carlo was a perfect place to get our tennis-fix going. Interestingly enough, the tennis centre is actually on French soil, but considering Monaco is only one square kilometer in size, space is hard to come by.

Beautiful day for some good tennis

Both the French and the Monaco government cleverly put tolls on the road leading into Monaco and I’m sure they make a fair amount of money just on that tiny piece of tarmac. Other than the tolls, the view was beautiful and we were set for some great tennis. The winding roads of Monaco are exactly what you see on television during F1, a network of roads of compressed twists and turns such that your GPS is guaranteed to lose its bearings.

We do have to say that the tournament was well organized with the city rerouting traffic to ease the flow and numerous car parks offering ticket holders cheap parking. Parking was a breeze and we reached there early enough to have a walk around the grounds. This was our first clay court and Masters 1000 experience so we were pretty excited just walking into the grounds. We had bought the quarterfinals and since it was a men’s only tournament, it assured us of a full day of top mens action. The only disappointment was that Djokovic had pulled out citing injury only a few days before tournament started. He was on a winning streak and it would have been great to see him at his best. The line up was: Federer vs Melzer, Murray vs Gil, Nadal vs Ljubicic, Troicki vs Ferrer which wasn’t too bad actually. We are both Nadal fans and it was a treat to finally watch him play after a few missed opportunities in previous tournaments. Here are pictures from the matches.

Federer taking his serve

Nadal lining up his devastating forehand return

None of the matches were particularly outstanding but the company made up for it. We mixed up our seat numbers and sat on a German retiree’s seat by mistake. We ended up talking to him throughout the day about Germany and Singapore, as he had traveled to Singapore before for work. We talked about mooncakes, durians etc, lol… Apparently, he has a home in Nice and comes to Monte Carlo for tennis as well as F1, definitely living the high life. We also ended up talking to an old Italian man who drove from Genoa together with his son. English wasn’t his strong point but we managed to have some good laughs.

View from Prince Albert's seat

All in all, it was a pretty good day. It was our first day seated on one spot since being on the road for more than 2 months, so definitely a good break. Next, lets see if Nice is indeed nice.