Visited: July 9th, 2018
I've been a tennis fan for a long time and with some decent Canadians in the mix these days (Milos Raonic, Denis Shapovalov, Eugenie Bouchard & Vasek Pospisil) being in London in July was the perfect excuse to go to watch some Wimbledon Championships matches at the All England Lawn Tennis Club. I even got to see Raonic play!
The Wimbledon Championships are likely the most famous of all the tennis majors. It's played in July each year in the London neigbourhood of Wimbledon southeast of central London. It's easily accessible from the tube via the District Line and close to some other lines as well. If you take the District Line make sure to watch which train you're on as they split off at Earl's court in one of three directions. Not surprisingly you want the Wimbledon train!
The other three majors are the Australian Open in January, the French Open in May and the US Open in September.
Getting into Wimbledon
To get tickets you either have to 1) enter a ballet which runs from September to December each year preceding the following year's tournament or 2) buy the daily release from Ticketmaster which goes on sale a day or two at 9AM before each match day. I'm not sure if you can get an entire tournament pass. I believe most tickets are only for the day of.
Tickets get you entry to one of the main courts, usually with reserved seating but sometimes not. These are the Centre Court, Courts 1, 2 & 3. This year Ticketmaster seemed to be selling only entry to Courts 1 & 3, so perhaps Centre and Court 2 are only distributed via the ballot. In any case if you get in you have first come first serve (ACED IT!) access to all the other courts. There are around 15 more in addition to the main courts. This is how I got to see Raonic as he was playing in a non-reserved court.
Below: One of the smaller courts, Raonic serving, Raonic pregame and the first match I saw on the Raonic court (I think court 12) between Italian Camila Giorgi and Russian Ekaterina Makarova. Giorgi won in 2 sets - it was still a great game.
Raonic Serving for the Match
England was blistering hot in July. July 9th was no different and not wanting to lose my seat in the non-reserved court where Raonic was scheduled to play, I sat through the first match (Giorgi v Makarova) for almost 2 hours. I was then roasting away for another 2 hours+ as Raonic defeated 22 year old American Mackenzie McDonald who impressively took the 3rd set in a tiebreak from Raonic.
The highlight of the day though was watching Raonic methodically playing his service game. For those who have seen him play he's very much built on routine. Getting the towel after almost every point. Checking many balls to pick his favorite, mechanically moving through his service motion. You can't really fault him, he has a top-3 or better serve and smashes aces all over the place!
What you also see is his ground game is good but clearly a level below the top players which is why you rarely see him beat Murray (3 - 9) (Wimbledon 2016 - I could have cried), Federer (3 - 11), Nadal (2 - 7) and Djokovic (0 - 9). These players are a combined 36 - 8 against him and are in their own level of elite. But that he can beat them is still impressive as they've won 53 out of 60 grand slams since 2004. The rest of the field he can beat more often but not consistently. Nonetheless he is still fun to watch.
In the end Raonic won his 4th round match in 4 sets with (37 aces!) lining him up to play John Isner in the QFs
The All England Lawn Tennis Club - walking the grounds.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club is in fact owned by the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club Ltd. giving a hint that Croquet was played there (or maybe still is) as well. In fact taking a snippet from the link above, it was in fact a Croquet club first!
"The Club was founded on 23 July 1868 as The All England Croquet Club.
Its name was changed in 1877 to The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club and in 1899 to The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club."
AELTC is a membership based club with around 375 full members, 100 or so temporary members and various honorary members. Like many British establishments, getting into the AELTC is a matter of prestige and social status. You either have to be nominated by other members or have made some type of tennis accomplishment - like winning Wimbledon or doing some great service to the game.
Walking around the grounds is quite the experience. You can see clearly there are tennis fans and clearly there are people there for the social occasion (I'm sure there is overlap between the two). l saw at least 3 beer or champagne gardens. There are members only areas, VIP areas, terraces, patios and general dinning areas. You can really see why people would come here to be seen and people watch. There are plenty of chill out areas as well and often you'll find people sitting on a hill or grass watching a big screen of one of the matches in the big courts. There's a ton to do and see in the grounds in addition to tennis, you won't be bored there!
The grounds: 1) Walking towards the monster centre court, 2) Order of Play - important to know who's playing where and when, 3) the tournament board, 4) the view over one of the many beer (or champagne) gardens.
I finally made it to my seat - just in time to wrap up the day.
After watching Raonic play, I ate some (very late) lunch and finally got to my reserved seat in Court 3. Unfortunately I missed John Isner play, another big server who happened to beat Raonic in the next round. Instead I got to see a 2nd round mixed doubles match between winners - two young British players (Jay Clarke / Harriet Dart) and two veterans (Max Mirnyi, 41 and Kveta Peschke, 43). The match was 3 sets and less intense than the singles matches I saw. It almost seemed like they were playing a friendly match. Certainly some good times on the court. I sat directly beside the friends and family seats and figured out shortly after sitting down I was beside Kveta's husband/coach. It was a neat up close experience and something that you can find at Wimbledon (except don't expect it at the finals in Centre Court!).
I took one final tour around the grounds to soak up as much as I could of the experience. It was certainly worth the trip to Wimbledon and I will go back another time if I can!
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