Centre Court Tickets

When my colleague told me that there were Wimbledon tickets for sale online I was very sceptical - but it was true! The extra seats added at the top of Centre Court along with the new roof are being sold on Ticket Master the night before each day’s play.

Tickets were sold out almost instantly but I managed to secure two Centre Court tickets for yesterday’s play! Including booking fee it cost £77 a ticket but it was worth it to see an outstanding 4th round line-up… Federer and Murray on the same day?!

Roger Federer(SUI)[2] vs Robin Soderling(SWE)[13]
Dinara Safina(RUS)[1] vs Amelie Mauresmo(FRA)[17]
Andy Murray(GBR)[3] vs Stanislas Wawrinka(SUI)[19]

I can’t fully describe what a fantastic day of tennis it was. For me and my friend it started out on court 6 in the blazing hot sunshine watching Akiko Omae from Japan in the girls singles. Damn, she hits the ball well!

Federer vs Soderling

Of course, the main action was on Centre Court where Roger Federer kicked off proceedings at 1pm. In a repeat of this year’s French Open final his opponent was Robin Soderling.

Soderling got off to the better start but had one loose service game which was all Federer needed.

On the way back from the loo who should walk up the stairs but victorious Akiko-chan from earlier on! Everybody wants to see Federer, even the players.

Anyway, the following two sets were also serving shoot outs with both men serving a little too well for too many decent rallies.

Federer didn’t seem to need his A-game and largely played pretty defensively and yet still appeared to win easily in the end. Although he was impressive I guess I’ll have to wait till I get to see him in a final to see him at his best.

Safina vs Mauresmo

The Safina vs Mauresmo match was very entertaining, a real battle with Safina’s brutal ground strokes against Mauresmo’s old school grass court knowhow.

All of a sudden, half way through the match young lads in green stormed the court and in a matter of seconds the famous covers were protecting the grass from the rain which had started to fall.

This meant I was there for something historic - the first time the roof was closed for a real match! In total it took somewhere in the region of half an hour to close the roof and for the air circulation system to get going. The players came on again and you could see small shadows around them in different directions: floodlights!

As for the match, it really looked like Mauresmo was getting the upper hand but all credit to Safina for coming back so strongly.

Murray vs Wawrinka

The decision was made to keep the roof closed for the following match - what a blessing that turned out to be.

Wawrinka came out blazing and really blitzed Murray in the first set. His single handed backhand really is a thing of beauty and he really rips it with pace and spin. He was going after it with seemingly more conviction and confidence than even the mighty Federer.

Being on Centre Court at Wimbledon you can imagine the support Murray got and the atmosphere kept on increasing in both tenseness and volume.

When Murray was up two sets to one it felt like he could have put Wawrinka away in the 4th set, but it wasn’t to be. The crowd was stunned when Wawrinka snatched the set and forced a deciding 5th set.

By now it must have been close to 10pm and it was thanks to the earlier rain that the roof had been closed and that the match would be played to the finish.

Murray got the dream start and went up a break but was it too soon? My heart was beating fast and the almost inevitable happened: Murray was broken back.

Grabbing the vital 2nd break sent the crowd wild and the it felt like everyone must have been nearly as exhausted as the two players who’d been slogging it out for 4 hours when Murray fell onto all fours after striking a clean winner to win an epic and history making match.