I entered the ballot this year thinking that I had a reasonable chance of getting tickets. Yea right – what a fantasy that was. So today, on the third day of the Championship, at about 2pm I found myself lining up with R and about a billion other people trying to get into the grounds.

The weather today couldn’t have been more pleasant and aside from the uneven tanning I got from always facing one direction the queuing wasn’t all that bad and soon enough, after not quite 3 hours of waiting, we found ourselves inside Wimbledon. I felt giddy with excitement. Seriously – I did.

We, or more likely I, had been studying the order of play for the day while waiting in line so at least we had a clue which matches we were up for. Unfortunately for us a lot of the matches were completed fairly routinely today so it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to get Centre Court or Court 1 resale tickets. We ended up moving around a bit to see as many different matches as possible:

– Court 18: Fernando Gonzalez v Tomas Zib
– Court 19: Xavier Malisse/Olivier Rochus v Gilles Muller/Christophe Rochus
– Court 14: Mario Ancic (Little Goran) v Danai Udomchoke (could barely see for all the people crowded around this court)
– Court 13: Feliciano Lopez (Babe!!)/Rafael Nadal (Baby!!) v Tomas Cibulec/David Rikl
– Court 4: Mikhail Youzhny v Jean-Rene Lisnard (only a snipet)
– Court 3: Gael Monfils v Dominik Hrbaty
– Court 2: Florian Mayer v Fernando Verdasco

and finally we made it to Court 1! Some extremely nice ladies were leaving and gave us their tickets. They were very good seats only a few rows back from the court. As for the match – we had the privilege of watching Martina Navratilova (still playing at 48 years young!!) playing doubles with Anna-Lena Groenefeld against Rika Fujiwara and Saori Obata. An entertaining match and an absolute delight to see Martina enjoying her tennis so much.

The day was not completely over at this stage as it was still bright and sunny when we left Court 1 at maybe 7.45 in the evening. Greg Rusedski was involved in a thriller on Centre Court against Joachim Johansson so we headed to Henman Hill, or Murray Field, or Rusedski’s Ridge or whatever you want to call it to see the match on the big screen. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t go to Wimbledon just to sit on this hill but, with a glass of Pimms in hand, sit we did. It was actually quite enjoyable – when we weren’t struggling to try and keep our seat that is (the slope is surprisingly steep.) Of course, in the end Rusedski lost the match but he did keep us entertained until dusk.

Overall it was a great day and I think it would even be worth camping overnight to get in a whole day’s play next year … maybe. Probably. Definitely.

See the photos here.