After four years of missing out on the Wimbledon ballot I FINALLY won tickets to the event!

By now I’ve been to Wimbledon via all sorts of ways – in 2005 I came down to Wimbledon after a half day at work with Rehana to get ground pass tickets, in 2006 and 2007 Akh won tickets in the ballot and took me along, and in 2008 Jules, Sandra and I did the overnight camping thing!

I wonder if entering the Wimbledon ballot is like getting into the London Marathon. In the fifth year of applying you’re guaranteed a spot. Whatever the reason I’m not going to say no although I must admit that the steep price (£92) nearly did me in. However, they were men’s semi-final day tickets (that is, on centre court) so it seemed wrong to reject them.

I obviously offered Akh first right of the refusal on a ticket in return for him taking me in 2006 and 2007 but when he said no I offered it to Pauline, who was the person I knew most wanted to go to Wimbledon.

Before the men’s semi-finals started Pauline and I had a bit of time to see some early matches. At this stage of the tournament its mainly the junior which are playing – I saw on Court 18 that one of my brother’s club’s players (he is the treasurer of the Gold Coast Tennis Club) was on court. Bernaard Tomic is an up-and-coming young player who has “one of those” parents in his Dad. Apparently his father is a real menace around the tournaments in Oz. Let’s hope that doesn’t hold Bernard back in his career.

When I first received my tickets I saw the ZZ numbering on the ticket and I wondered exactly where we were on Centre Court. I suspected it was practically the back row and I was nearly right – it was the second last row in the new extension. This year they finished extending centre court including a roof overtop so that no rain or not – play would go on. When we got to our seat my nose felt like it was going to start bleeding … ha ha! Lucky I had my new 12x zoom camera!

I have to shout out to the nice camera man who allowed us to go all the way down to the court to take some close-up pics before play started.

Throughout the past week I’ve been anxiously keeping an eye on the men’s results hoping for a good semi-final event. Unfortunately Raphael Nadal pulled out before the tournament started – such a shame. Its always good to see an Aussie in the final but no one has been in any sort of form lately to get through. Lleyton Hewitt looked like he could make it but lost a tough match the other day to bow out in the quarters. Still, Pauline and I had a pretty good line-up:

Roger Feder v Tommy Haas

The Two Andys – Andy Murray v Andy Roddick

Hilariously during this match someone called out Go Andy during the match but never really said which Andy he was going for.

Pauline and I tried to sneak out a couple of times to get lunch (successful), to get some pimms (not so successful) and to try and find some strawberries and cream (not so successful) but the lines were ridiculously long. As a result we missed nearly the entire first set of the Andy v Andy game!

We eventually got our strawberries and cream though. Even if it was at the end of the day.