Cultural Experiences: Wimbledon 2019 Day 6

Another year, another trip to Wimbledon for the tennis! It was just Jess and I this year, and we got to the queue around 5:15 to receive what I realised looking back was the worst queue number yet... Oh dear. But it seemed fine at the time. We napped our way through the morning and I spent about an hour total queueing for the bathrooms (kind of mental), and then about 10:30 we really started to move! On the way in I picked up my programme and got a free Wimbledon radio for having an Amex card. We then got in with our Grounds tickets (about 11:15), and headed straight to Court 17 to catch Sam Querrey playing John Millman, an Australian. We queued up for a while with some other Aussies (there were a lot and I talked to a few of them!) for a while, before getting in in time for the third set. It was nice to cheer on an Aussie, but unfortunately that was the final set as he lost shortly afterwards.

By that time it was just after 1pm, so we picked up some lunch and found ourselves a spot on the Hill to watch Ashleigh Barty play on the big screen (she was on Centre Court). I had a delicious sausage roll and Hibiscus ‘drink’ which was like sweet cordial and I loved! Ash dominated against Harriet Dart (from the UK) and beat her in straight sets with some great points. She really is an excellent player and I hope she can win Wimbledon this year!

After that we weren’t super sure which court we wanted to go and see. We wandered around, bought some balls from the second hand store (did that last year as well), went to the gift shop (candles again, I love the grass scent!) and went down to the Southern Village which is where the VIP area was last year (it seems like this year that its across the road instead). Robinsons, the squash/cordial brand, had a stand with their summer special flavour which is Strawberry, Cucumber and Mint. It was so good and we each bought a bottle which came filled with it, fresh strawberries and mint and free refills!

Then we decided to head over to Court 3, where the Bryan brothers were playing in the doubles. We stayed there for most of the match because it was excellent. Towards the end our plan was to leave and head to Court 12, where Ash Barty was due to play in the doubles with Azarenka, but play was suspended in the match two before theirs. It turned out that a spectator had had a medical emergency and even a defibrillator was needed so play got suspended for several ours and they had evacuated the court and the players. So with a match and a part of another before Barty was due to play we decided we weren’t going to be able to catch that one. There was also a mixed doubles which had Andy Murray and Serena Williams playing together, but at 5:30 that still hadn’t been scheduled on a particular court, so we decided to head home. We picked up our strawberries and cream (free with HSBC!) for the walk home along with a refill of squash.

Once we got home I checked the order of play and realised we had made the right call - the Barty/Azarenka match was rescheduled onto Court 2, which had already finished for the day, and the Murray/Williams mixed doubles was put onto Centre Court. With both of those ticketed courts, we wouldn’t have seen them anyway, so instead we watched the Barty/Azarenka match on iPlayer while eating Five Guys burgers for dinner. A lovely day had by all!