my friends philippa, mike, larry, and larry's son jakob got tickets through the online (authorized) resale market that is only available to the brits (phil and mike are both british and thus able to buy these tickets). tickets would pop up and then disappear as people bought them, so we stalked the website a lot hoping to find something good. this popped up a couple weeks ago and we pounced on them. we liked that we got a lot of tennis, too - 8 hours for a 40 pound ticket. we bought the "B" class tickets, which meant we wouldn't have the best ("A") seats, but the next level up (the classes went up to "E").
olympic tennis is at wimbledon, and on monday when we went there were matches from 11:30am-8pm on 12 courts! 12! you could buy one of three kinds of tickets: tickets to centre court, tickets to court 1, or tickets that didn't allow you access to either of those courts but allowed you to sit at any of the other 10 courts on a first come, first serve basis. we had court 1 tickets, which meant we had an actual seat at court 1 but could walk into any of the 10 other courts (except centre), too. (i feel like i'm making this explanation very confusing, so i hope you understand. actual seat at court 1; ability to see matches at 10 additional courts if there was a free seat.)
we arrived at noon, and i did the smartest thing i could have possibly done: i took photos of the big board that showed which matches were being played at which court. i am a genius.
(one of many such photos. apparently the dutch fans like cheese hats just like wisconsin fans.)
throughout the day we would refer back to the photos to decide where to head next. first stop, court 2 to watch andy roddick play (he won).
next stop, our reserved seats at court 1 to watch serena play! court 1 was much bigger than 2 - and let me take a minute here to say that the courts ranged in size from "oh, is that a match?" with benches to seat maybe 20 fans on the pathway between the larger courts...to a couple hundred...to several thousand seats.
serena killed this tiny polish girl. poor polish girl.
do you see the sun? THERE WAS SUN ALL DAY! I GOT A SUNBURN ON MY NOSE! incredible weather.
then we went back to court 2 because the afternoon match there looked amazing - williams sisters! my (excellent) plan was that we would get there before the williams sisters played their doubles match because i figured that would fill up quickly. we arrived in the middle of a match between a german dude and a serbian dude that was really fun (probably my favorite match of the day, actually - the serbian fans were crazy and there was lots of banter - and the two men were pretty equally matched. also! as the german lost he had a hissy fit and slammed his racket into his shoe four or five times, breaking it in half. omg! eek! we were near his (pregnant) wife, who was not amused with him). the crowd was pretty small when we arrived, so we walked ALL THE WAY TO THE FRONT ROW AND SAT DOWN. after about two minutes i realized it was too close (too close! i was too close at the olympics!) because it was right in the line of the serve and i genuinely thought i might get hit in the face by their 200 km/h serves and die. we moved back one row.
so i watched venus and serena play doubles from the second row - with this view:
incredible. the place was entirely full by the time the match started, and my get-there-early plan was a huge success.
hi ladies.
if you, like me, are not a huge tennis fan, you might think "i can't tell venus and serena apart!" you are kidding yourself, as i was. you just haven't been paying attention. serena has probably 40 pounds on venus. i was scared of serena.
the five of us in our seats!
then it was off to court 1 again to watch federer play doubles. while court 1 was bigger, i loved the intimacy of court 2, especially when it was full...and being in the second row DID NOT HURT MATTERS.
the swiss playing the japanese. stop wearing the same colors and confusing me.
it got cold. we put on our jackets. federer served at 211 km/h. omg. there was a tie breaking point thing that i had to learn about. earlier in the day i learned not to call deuce "a 40-40 tie" [jenny is totally rolling her eyes at this - sorry, jenny!]. philippa and mike were excellent teachers. i decided i like the fast pace of doubles much better than singles.
honestly? one of the most fun days EVER. excellent company, amazing seats, fun matches, great atmosphere, sunshine, understanding in the moment that i was incredibly incredibly lucky to be able to experience all of this. i'm not a huge tennis fan, but the ability to be so close totally hooked me. we couldn't have asked for a better day - better tickets - better matches - better anything. (actually, wrong. better vegetarian food. i could have asked for that.)
40 pounds incredibly well spent.
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