Going to Wimbledon?

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Going to Wimbledon?

Post by prasen9 »

I might be in the London area during the second week of Wimbledon, Wed. to Sat. I was wondering if anyone else from the forum is going there. I don't have tickets. Does anyone know if there is a realistic chance of getting a ticket on the same day? Also, at what time of the day do they get sold out? Are there different tickets for different courts? If I am primarily interested in the Indian representation, which at that point will mostly be in doubles/mixed, do they become centre court matches, or side courts? Do you need tickets for the side courts? Basically, if anyone having such information is willing to share, that will be great.

Sorry, if I posted in the wrong place, but I just wanted to connect with any fan-club members if they are going and get some info. Please feel free to move this post if necessary.

Thanks,
Prasenjit
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by Omkara »

Did you go? And who did you meet?
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by PKBasu »

I went in 2005. On Saturday (25th June), I queued up for over 2 hours, and got into the grounds quite late in the afternoon (with my 9 year old daughter Meghna, who had just started tennis lessons but knew little about the international game). I went straight to the court where Sania Mirza was playing her MxD match. It was 2-2 in the final set and everyone around the court was an Indian (or so it seemed), but everyone would just politely clap after every point. I hollered "come on Sania" to Meghna's and the crowd's horror -- but I didn't relent, and soon the entire crowd was behind Sania (and her Swedish partner, perhaps Aspelin). She won the next 4 games! I wrote it up that night for this forum.

The next day, I was lunching with my friend Rahul Jacob (FT Travel editor, and an absolute tennis fanatic too) when I got a cellphone call from a Hyderabad number. It turned out to be Nasima Mirza -- who had got my number from Jay (after reading my write-up on this forum). She offered me a "player's guest pass" for Monday (27 June). I was to fly out that day, but I immediately accepted. On Monday morning, she called back to say that she'd also been able to get a guest pass for Meghna. So off we went to the airlines office on Edgeware Road, postponed our flight by a day, and took the tube to Wimbledon -- where we had the honour of being Sania Mirza's guests at Wimbledon. Oh what a day it was! I saw Leander play, met Jaidip Mukherjea (and when I introduced him to Meghna with his playing record at Wimbledon, he said "your dad knows my career better than me"...!), Naresh Kumar, got Mahesh Bhupathi and Andy Roddick's autographs in the players' lounge. Perfect!

I've been back many times, but never quite as memorably as a player's guest!!
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by PKBasu »

And here's my report from 25 June 2005. I actually spoke on the phone with Jay while still in the ticket queue!!
PKBasu wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:58 am I had the distinct pleasure of watching Sania Mirza take her and Simon Aspelin into the second round yesterday. (I was over-optimistic when I told Jay I was 10 minutes away from getting in; it took nearly another hour -- for a total of two hours in the queue, all because of Andy Murray, but it was worth it in the end). When the final moment of entry into the hallowed grounds occurred, the scoreboard showed 1-2 in the final set. It was still on serve, and the first game I watched (or perhaps the second) had a loooong sequence of deuces on Sania's serve. Court no. 4 was 95% surrounded by Indians, but you wouldn't know that from listening to the sounds. They just politely clapped after every point, it seemed. I changed that in a hurry. In the first couple of games, it seemed our pair was under much more pressure, and it seemed only a matter of time before they would lose.
But a little bit of serious cheering between points (encouragement for the good shots, in particular) can lift a player/team. My throat was in action from the second point I saw (to the detriment of my vocal chords and my daughter's ears...). A mix of humour and sheer loudness soon had the crowd galvanised; Sania seemed a tad embarrassed at first, but I think (in retrospect) that her game began to flow as a result of the encouragement.
And she is even better in real life than the impressive player I saw on TV against Kuznetsova. The power in her groundstrokes matched and usually surpassed both the men on the court, and hitting the ball to her was never the best policy for her opponents. The power and accuracy of Sania's groundstrokes keeps getting better almost every month these days. Etlis was easily the craftiest person on court, mixing in the volleys, drop shots and delicate touch that makes great doubles players. Our pair generally stayed back, although Aspelin occasionally showed good volleying ability too. Sania's volley is not yet a strength, but she didn't miss many; the difference between her volleys and her groundstrokes from the baseline is that the volley is still basically a defensive shot (or an occasional deftly placed shot) which she caresses rather than pummels. Once she starts doing the latter, she will be unstoppable. Her return of serves were excellent throughout naturally, although Etlis had little difficulty holding his serve (too much variety and placement, although Sania had one breathtaking return against him that cost him a point on serve). There was one particularly memorable rally that went for about 15 shots between Sania and Etlis, where the former's power almost got the better of Etlis's craft and strokeplay, until he hit one to Aspelin and the latter volleyed into the net (to the audible disappointment of the crowd; soon after, I got the crowd to chant HIS name when he came up with a good shot, and his smile was noticeable!). Aspelin's serve came under severe pressure at 4-5 (we were down 15-40), but some absolutely brilliant, occasionally breathtaking play from Sania (and one or two nice volleys and overheads from Aspelin) got us back even, and pumped up. Sania immediately put Lisa McShea's serve under pressure, and we soon had a couple of breakpoints (15-40) after some magnificent returns from Sania (that were too strong even for Etlis!). IIRC, we broke on the next point. And Sania held serve with consummate ease to end the match in style (when serving in doubles, it's always nice to have a partner who can put away the volley on the third point, and Simon did that twice in that final game to make things easy). It was wonderful to see Sania win her second match at Wimbledon, but I have a message for the Indians in the crowd: don't just stand around and give "silent" encouragement (she probably can't see that most people in the crowd are Indians); use your throats to cheer your player on, it always works!! (How I wish I had been on centre court during the Kuznetsova match rather than watching on a TV in faraway Amsterdam!).
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by Omkara »

:D wow great days
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by Atithee »

While we can’t have Sania back yet, it’s good to have PKB back.
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by suresh »

Atithee wrote: Thu Jun 11, 2020 5:05 pm While we can’t have Sania back yet, it’s good to have PKB back.
:bounce:
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by prasen9 »

Sorry, Omkara. That year, nobody replied. And, at the end, something happened and I did not go :-( Still on my to-do list before I die.

And, yes, it is great to have PKB back.

I stopped reading the old messages. But, heartfelt thanks to you for bringing back some of the old messages and talking about things. It prompted PKB to share the wonderful report. More power to old-post-diggers (or even old post-diggers)!
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by Omkara »

oh sorry to hear that. But I guessed something like that as the thread went nowhere. Take care and hope someday the entire team can make a trip to some tournament and watch it together :D
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by prasen9 »

The easiest would be to do something for the USO. People do that every year. I know Gautam attends quite a few. The problem is that usually that is the first week of classes here and I do not like to get a substitute right in the first week. Or my daughter to miss first week of classes at school. Maybe next year, we can do some planning and meet all together at the USO.
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Re: Going to Wimbledon?

Post by Sin Hombre »

I would be up for it.

Have to say that the USO is a ripoff though.

Australian Open is my favorite based on the ones I have been to (not been to FO) - not expensive to get great seats close to the action and the players buy into the friendly nature of the tournament.
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