I’ve been hearing some bad news already regarding Wimbledon TV coverage back in the States. Taped Serena, commercials at 5-5 in a breaker, too much of Ana, the Game’s New Star.
Would it make it worse if I spent a few minutes talking about what it’s like to watch tennis inside the All England Club, without help or hindrance from ESPN? I hope not, because after walking through the grounds for the first time in three years yesterday, I kept finding myself in obscure locations that suddenly seemed, at the moment, to be the best place in the world to watch tennis. Maybe that’s to be expected when you’re in the game’s original home. After all, this is the place where the dimensions of the court were decided on back in the 1870s, and they haven’t changed since.
I’ll start at the core and work outward.
Centre Court
I don’t know what it’s like to sit in the far reaches of this compact yet grand arena, but I doubt it’s too horrible. If you’re a regular visitor to American sporting palaces, including Arthur Ashe Stadium, you notice immediately that there are no bad seats inside Centre Court, just some that aren’t quite as close to the players as others.
This only makes the playing surface itself seem that much larger, wider, longer, more spacious. In Ashe, the stadium dwarfs the court; here, the court dwarfs the rest of the stadium.
The press “tribune” here is the center of the Centre. Reporters sit at long brown benches and scribble on old-fashioned mini-desks that run along entire rows. The section is in the corner of the court on the other side from the Royal Box. Sitting in the first few rows, you feel as if you’re jutting out into the court; it’s like a balcony just a few feet above the stage. Still, the section is covered by the roof’s overhang, which frames the sky in a wide oval.
It’s a cliché, but you feel the history, the ghosts, when you watch here. Even the particular sound of the ball is familiar from television. The thump at contact echoes from the rafters and back walls, which are enclosed by the roof. This gives the ball a sort of hollow sound. Here, the eras of Budge, King, Laver and Borg don’t seem so distant, because the court where they played their most famous matches is still standing, its atmosphere still intact. When Roger Federer strolled out in his cardigan—I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I miss the jacket—at exactly 1:00 on Monday to officially open the tournament, you could place him in a long line of Wimbledon champions who have done the same over the decades. His casual lordliness fit the scene perfectly. That’s what tennis champions are supposed to be.
This isn’t to say that time doesn’t pass and change doesn’t happen inside Centre Court. Next year, of course, the ultimate sign of the big-money sporting era, the retractable roof, will be introduced. This year the court’s old scoreboard was quietly replaced by a large video-style display; it’s perilously close to a Jumbotron. My first reaction, naturally, was disgust—it seemed way too obtrusive and, well, untraditional. But by Monday’s end, I was used to it. That’s Wimbledon’s secret, I guess: If it isn’t change we can believe in, it’s at least change we can get used to.
The Crow’s Nest
Or can we get used to it? The Crow’s Nest is another Wimbledon classic, a little spot at the top of the bleachers between Court 2, the soon-to-be-abandoned Graveyard of Champions, and Court 3. Lucky press and TV personalities can climb up even farther and stand on top of the scoreboard—still changed by hand—that serves both courts. From this vantage, you can see the Graveyard, and at the same time look out on the old rectangular garden that contains the other side courts.
Along with Court 2, the Crow’s Nest is going out of service after 2008. No matter how much we may like the new Court 2 amphitheatre in the future, we can still mourn the Crow’s Nest. Court 2 has been feared and hated by top seeds—Agassi, Sampras, McEnroe, and Serena have all suffered shocking upsets there—but it’s a favorite among fans. You can see stars from a few feet away; today Davydenko, Davenport, and Blake will be there.
The bleachers on Court 2 are low and open enough that, if you stay there long enough, you’ll see an entire day—its sky, its sun—develop from bright morning to encroaching late-evening darkness. The court sits just inside the boundary of the club, and from one side of the stands you not only see tennis, you also get to watch the sun make its long, slow progression through the afternoon (it’s doesn’t get dark until 10 or so these days in London). All day, red double-decker buses glide back and forth on the road beyond the stands, and the trees on the suburban hill behind the club blow back and forth in the sea breeze.
On Monday night, just before 9 P.M., I took a break from writing and went to see some of Mauresmo vs. Harkleroad on the Graveyard. Their white dresses, and Mauresmo’s slice backhand, made the scene look like it could have been tennis circa 1930, which was beautiful to see. Even more than that, the darkness that was slowly engulfing them—there are no lights at Wimbledon—reminded me of playing on summer evenings as a kid and trying to get as much tennis in before it got too dark. We'd keep at it until the only thing you could see was the yellow ball itself. As it went past you.
I don’t know of any other professional-grade court that can evoke so many of the elements and emotions of tennis. We’ll miss the Graveyard.
Court 3
On the other side of Court 2 and the Crow’s Nest, just a few feet away, the atmosphere is decidedly different. Court 3 and its environs are bustling, fluid, urban. Wimbledon has neighborhoods. Here, another set of bleachers sits behind a wide walkway that leads into the most venerable section of the grounds, the garden of side-courts that has remained relatively unchanged over the decades.
During close matches, this area becomes completely clogged, as it did Monday for Anna Chakvetadze’s third-set tiebreaker. At other times, it serves as a crossroads for wandering fans; they come to the top step, hang out, see who’s playing, and decide whether to plunge ahead and into the garden. The press seats are located right in the corner, near these steps. From noon until 9:00, there’s a sense of action here.
Court 8
There’s no night session at Wimbledon, but the days last long enough that the sun splits the day into two sessions—bright early-afternoon light and golden late-afternoon light. I walked to the center of the side-court area yesterday around 6:00 P.M. There the sun had turned the grass on Court 8 the color of a tennis ball: green-gold. It almost looked better with no players on it. I stood at the far corner of the court and wrote in my notebook: “Who cares where the ball goes on a court like this?” A few minutes later, I was writing again when a tennis ball hit me on the leg. I’d been clocked by a Victor Hanescu serve. I was shocked that it didn’t hurt at all. But I guess it does matter where the ball goes, even on a court like this one.
