LONDON—Compared to taxi drivers in New York, London cabbies know their tennis.
On the way from Heathrow to SW19 on Saturday, my driver asked me why I had made the trip from the States.
“To see Wimbledon,” I said.
“Ah,” he answered.
After a pause, he added, “Well, it starts on Monday.”
That was the extent of our discussion about the tournament, and that might have been the extent of his knowledge about it. Still, to an American, just being aware of when a Slam starts qualifies you as a bona fide tennis nerd.
He was right, of course: Wimbledon starts on Monday, and the grounds looked suitably groomed on this sunny Sunday afternoon. Where the other majors hold concerts and kids’ activities the day before play begins, Wimbledon devotes those final 24 hours to the grass itself. The only activity on the club’s courts were a few last-minute measurements of the blades themselves, just to make sure everything was correct down to the millimeter.
The players had to make do with the practice courts at Aorangi Park, but things were almost as bucolic over there. Marin Cilic and Milos Raonic traded languid ground strokes; Petra Kvitova practiced her volleys; Andy Murray and Grigor Dimitrov traded trick shots. When Murray is doing a Nick-Kyrgios-style full-frontal-tweener, you can guess he’s feeling pretty good about things—in particular his hip. After a few days of biting their nails over the health of Murray and Jo Konta, their best women’s player who injured her neck in a fall last week, British fans breathed a sigh of relief today. Both will be in action on Monday.
But if all was calm at SW19, that’s not how things looked in London’s tabloids. As Wimbledon approached, the papers here did what they do best: made as many mountains out of molehills as they could, and told a few good tales along the way. Here’s a round-up of a few of them that stood out to the American eye. (I’ll be doing a condensed version of this column each day through the fortnight.)
