Editors Thoughts 01 Mar 2014 - 17:15 / by Erica Kaplan / reads 10.Source:
Last week I had the pleasure of taking a tour of Wimbledon's tennis facilities. It was a miserably cold and rainy day in the west of London and I arrived at the picturesque village woefully ill-prepared. I can only blame the nice weather man on BBC1 who promised me clear skies and moderate temperatures for this unfortunate error that led me to leave my umbrella at home and venture out of my cozy (small) flat in Southwark without so much as a coat with a hood or a scarf.
It was a bracing walk up Church Road from the Tube station and by the time I arrived at the gates of the All England Lawn Tennis Club I was convinced I had treble pneumonia, but no matter it was my first time seeing Wimbledon as more than a picture on my television screen and for lack of a better phrase, I was excited.
My guide for this adventure into the world of 'The English Garden' was a man named Ben. Ben had impossibly high cheekbones and a posh accent that convinced me, without question, he was somehow related to Tom Hiddleston (there could be no other alternative to this deduction; it was fact). Ben immediately started prattling on about croquet and as an American I stood there starring at him like he had three heads as he went on to talk about the incandescently Englishness of the sport with it's incomprehensible rules and something about a visible and invisible boundary.
The croquet spiel ended with the story about how tennis came to be. The weight that was used to flatten the grass on the croquet courts broke down and the club needed a way to raise money to fix it. The All England Croquet Club decided to hold a 'Sphairistike' tournament (And no I have no idea how to pronounce this word. It look me three attempts, and a google search, to spell it correctly so please do not ask the American to attempt this impossible feat) to raise the necessary funds, which they did, and from this lawn tennis came to be.
After the history lesson, Ben escorted me to Court No.1. First impressions were that it was a lot smaller than it looks on TV, but good smaller, not disappointment smaller. It was intimate.
From TV it's hard to discern exactly how far away the crowds are from the courts so I never quite understood how a player could hear someone talking as they tried to serve. Now? Now I understand completely how this is possible. The crowds are literally no more than a few meters off court.
As I sat there trying to imagine what this place would look like full of people, what it would sound like after a big point, Ben started to talk about the new Master Plan for Wimbledon. The Master Plan for a complete overhaul of the grounds that would turn this place on it's grassy head. There would be new courts, a new player entrance, bigger seats, a roof for Court No.1, and countless other smaller adjustments, Having just completed an 18 year construction project in 2011 was a little taken aback by the sheer size of this new endeavor, but as Ben explained Wimbledon had to do this to be the best.
With the US Open putting millions of dollars into a Master Plan of their own to upgrade their facilities and with Roland Garros and the Australian Open doing to same it is more about keeping pace with other Slams than it is anything else and while Ben stood there, eyes gleaming at the possibilities, I sat there on a slightly wet, cold, hard seat with 'Anything You Can Do' from Annie Get Your Gun floating through my head.
Anything you can do, I can do better. I can anything better than you. No, you can't. Yes, I can. No, you can't. Yes, I can. No, you can't. Yes, I can, yes, I can!
At this moment all I can see is Uncle Sam, Pepe Le Pew, Steve Irwin and a Grenadier Guard on a tennis court, each standing on a quarter of it with their corresponding play court beneath their feet, singing aloud and gesturing emphatically. However, and quite obviously, the Grenadier Guard is silent, communicating solely with his stiff upper lip.
Before the rest of this delightful scene can play through my head we are on the move again. Ben leads us out of Court No.1 and smack dab right in front of Murray Mound. Now this I definitely expected to be bigger. I guess there's a reason why it's called a 'mound' and not a 'mountain'. How the thousands of people fit on this one bit of grass is almost unfathomable. I wouldn't have believed it was it not for the last 6 months of traveling on the Northern line during rush hour. The English, clearly having a different definition of personal space than Webster does.
Once again I stand there imagining the people with their Pimm's and champagne and strawberries and cream and I start to understand the motif Wimbledon has spend over a century instilling into the minds of the world: The quintessential English Garden.
Upon reaching the top of the mound Ben drops the mother of all bombshells. An inside scoop. For this year's tournament a fish will be given it's own twitter account. Just as the roof on Centre Court last year tweeted about the happenings under its roof, this fish will tweet about the happenings on the Mound. I stood there, gaping like a fish most likely, trying to decide whether they were completely bonkers or social media geniuses. I'm hoping for the latter and can only wish that this fish can take on my favorite aquatic sports buff, Paul the Octopus.
From Murray Mound we circled back to the TV/Media Centre roof and I got a bird's eye view of some of the construction happening on Courts 14 and 15. I managed to record a quick video of the work happening that day as Ben described how much detail does into building these courts. One of the things that struck me the most was that even if it's 3pm on a Friday, if the concrete they just poured is off by a few millimeters they go and completely redo it. That level of commitment to staggering, but without a doubt will make for two amazing new courts come next year.
After a quick foray into the Press Room facilities Ben brought me to the place I wanted to see most of all: Centre Court.
I sat where the written press sits -- on the original benches that once lined this iconic stadium. They were old and the green paint was slightly fading from the winter weather, but sitting there felt like you were watching tennis the way it was intended -- smushed on a hard bench, sandwiched between sports writers who wore their hats like Frank Sinatra and smelled like stale tobacco and whiskey, who were furiously writing notes in their own barely legible shorthand that only they understood, vying to be the first to break the news that this year's favorite was ousted by a plucky newcomer. Maybe that imagine is more baseball and Hearst Publishing than tennis at Wimbledon, but that's the Jerseyan in me. I feel like all old-time, proper newsmen were that image, or at least they tried to be.
It was easy to picture Centre Court on the last Sunday of the tournament. Men in white using their racket as an extension of their arm, running from the baseline to the net and back again. The roar and lull of the crowd. And finally, match point and the winner being crowned.
I didn't get into tennis until I was 16. Now, a month shy of my 23rd birthday, there is no way I could imagine tennis not in my life. Wimbledon was the first tournament I watched. I was home all summer, finishing up my sophomore year of high school single-handedly (literally SINGLE-handedly! I broke my arm in a car accident that April and was still in cast come June), It was 2007 and one of the rainiest Wimbledon's they ever had. I remember John McEnroe going on and on about how horrible this was for the players and the tournament staff, but I thought it was great.
I saw nearly every match of that year's Wimbledon because NBC had nothing to do besides replay every match during rain delays. I sat there in my kitchen, typing up notes on the Mao Dynasty, trying to understand how you could possibly go from 0 points to 15 to 30 to 40 and what in God's name love or deuce meant.
After those two weeks of incessant tennis I was hooked. I immediately fell in love with Rafael Nadal and his passionate, never give up, never back down attitude. At the time he was still an underdog compared to the likes of Roger Federer and as an American I love nothing more than a passionate underdog.
As I sat there staring at Centre Court those memories of that summer spent in my kitchen came flooding back. Wave after wave of emotions, all reminding me why it was that I moved to London in the first place.
I moved to London because I want that quintessential English Garden. I want to drink Pimm's and eat strawberries and cream while sitting on Murray Mound. I want the whicker basket with the red and white gingham blanket with Carson and Mrs. Hudson fretting about the state of the silverware.
The latter image is complete fantasy that I am well aware, but the former isn't. Wimbledon has managed to create The English Garden and they have managed to spread that theme all around and embed it in everything that they do.
The battle to stay the No.1 Grand Slam in the world is going to be fierce with constant changes and updates to the facilities, but if Wimbledon, through all of it's necessary modern advances, can keep their quintessential English Garden I believe they will stay No.1 for many, many years to come.
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