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View Full Version : xenon's Olympic blog. Wednesday at tennis



xenon21
08-08-2012, 14:03
A while ago I had randomly bought one ticket via cosport for a grounds pass at tennis. With hindsight I wish I had bought a few more because of all the difficulty people had getting tennis tickets but was too late. I had a 1.5 hour wait to get my tickets at the cosport queue (a lot better than the 5+ hours on the first day) and I was very excited about being able to catch some tennis at Wimbledon as I was on holiday in Canada during Andy’s run to the final a few weeks earlier. The only problem was the slight apprehension I had about the complaints of organisation people had about Olympics tennis. Andy was playing on centre court and I was hoping to somehow get resales for that court.

Packing for a day at tennis was relatively easy as I was fasting and therefore had no food to pack. My camera, marker, cap, GB flag :GBsmile: and programme all shoved in and I was on my way to Wimbledon woooooooo! District line was down but I actually found an easier way to get to Wimbledon which I may be using in the future. Allowed me to reach Wimbledon station early enough to get the shuttle bus to the grounds without too much of a wait. The queue to the security was deceivingly long as really it didn’t take too long to get to the front. And I was in! :clap:

I thought that I would try and get my bearings at first and have a look around the grounds to see where the practise courts were. They were actually very open and easy to watch the players as well as easy to catch them after. Gasquet I would see plenty a time walking around half the time on his phone! I then headed over to where the resale queue usually is at Wimbledon and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had one here too except that people didn’t know as much about it. Needless to say I was the first one in the queue. However, when I got to the window I was annoyed to hear that they had actually had a bunch of returns really early in the morning but they had been snapped up! If only I had come earlier! So it was a case of waiting in the drizzle to see if any would turn up. Their guesstimation was at around 2 there may be some. Poor workers must have felt like they were an automated machine repeating to everyone that there were no tickets! Happy that they knew I was the first one there I went onto the hill for a bit.

To my surprise I passed by a familiar face. Gethin Jones! He was on the hill doing a quiz between fans of two nations (not GB) which the winners getting 2 signed balls. Wasn’t really a close match but wish I could have got the chance to play as I knew some of the answers. Was able to get his autograph afterwards too as well as have a small chat!

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xenon21
09-08-2012, 14:46
The time I was waiting to see if any centre court returns would come back was pretty frustrating! There were actually quite a few court 1 returns which came back. Including one guy who had bought tickets for his family but they weren’t able to come so he had literally 3 which he gave for free. One woman had a centre court ticket that she had wanted to swap but seeing that they didn’t really do swaps officially at the resale nothing happened. However, there was one spare court 1 ticket at the resale office so past the one hour mark the person at the office gave the woman the court one ticket and beckoned me over… He gave me a centre court ticket in exchange for my £5! I was in!!!!!! The seat was pretty much right at the back but it was all about being there for the pretty good lineup! With a small jump for joy I made my way out off the hill, safe in the knowledge I didn’t have to keep queueing!

Prior to making my way to centre courts, I took my time to check out the rest of the grounds. I spotted Del Potro vs Simon warming up on court 3 which was a free for all court. I made my way down to the bottom to take a few pics before heading out. Sorry guys!

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RFS
09-08-2012, 20:25
Lord we don't call him gorgeous Gethin for nothing... did you take a pic of Lyndsey's book?

xenon21
09-08-2012, 22:57
Lord we don't call him gorgeous Gethin for nothing... did you take a pic of Lyndsey's book?

Very true :) I took the picture on Friday do the next blog :)

xenon21
09-08-2012, 23:02
I then went back to the practise courts to see who I could spot. Loving the openness of the practise courts (which were taking place on the outside courts). You can watch players practise easily and catch them off court pretty easily too. Amongst those I saw were Isner, Tipsy, Sharapova, Cilic and Zimovic. Got a few autographs and befriended a few gamesmakers. One in particular was so happy about being there and being able to watch the players practise close up! She had been given a Swiss pin and had Roddick speak to her. While I was there, we also saw Ferrer and Benneteau, the latter who was very sweet and completely made the gamesmaker’s day by saying hi to her and saying her name in his lovely French accent lol! To round up my trip to the practice courts, one other gamesmaker gave me one of the Olympic tennis balls.

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Niknak's Mum
12-08-2012, 10:29
Hi Xenon, it seems we were there on the same day! Shame we didn't bump in to you and glad you were also able to get on to Centre Court. You probably not recognise Niknak as he is now taller than me!! My blog is coming but I am struggling to figure out how to include my photos?:doh:

Nina
20-11-2012, 17:26
been an Olympic fan is so exciting
I wish I was too! :)
thanks for those pics and blog.

GB GB