I was there
I was there!
I took a tour across Europe after I graduated high school back in 2000. Yes, I know what you're thinking and I am on the seven year plan here at SFSU. Anyway, so our trip started out in London and from there we would go on to Paris, Nice, Lucerne Switzerland (which is the most beautiful city in Switzerland), Venice, Florance, Rome, and then back to London.
So there I was in London checking out the sites and after a long day of walking through Bill Shakespeare's home town, I sat down at the bar in my hotel to have a drink. While watching CNN at the bar they began to play the Wimbledon highlights for the day. At the time, I had been playing tennis for ten years and it was one of my dreams to some day be able to go to Wimbledon. It just so happened that I was seated next to a guy (or bloke as he called himself) that had just gotten back from the current day's play. We got to talking and I learned that I could simply walk up to the ticket window and buy tickets to the day's rounds. The only catch was that all Centre court tickets were not available to the public. I would have to find another way to get on to Centre court.
July 6th, 2000. I am at Wimbledon. I woke up at 5 in the morning so I could get there when the gates opened and I was planning on staying as long as I could. I spent the first couple of hours hoping from one court to the next because at Wimbeldon, there are 20 different courts. This was a big doubles day so my mom and I decided to buy Court 1 tickets to watch Lleyton Hewitt and Kim Clijsters play two Americans. Needless to say, by the end of the day's play, I was hooked.
July 7th, 2000. My mom and I decide to skip the tour of The Tower of London and head back to Wimbledon. We got inside knowledge about a ticket buy back booth at the top of the lawn by Centre Court where tickets that were discarded after a match are resold to anyone in line. To make a long story short, my mom and I were at Wimbledon on the day of the singles semi-final matches. In that day, Agassi would play Rafter and Sampras would play a Russian by the name of Vladimir Voltchkov. We waited in this line for five hours and while we did this, we sat on the lawn and watched one of the best semi final matches in Wimbledon history (Agassi vs. Rafter) which was being broadcast on a huge screen on the back of Centre Court.
Because of the length of the match, people left and dropped their tickets off to be re-sold. It just so happened that when my mom and I got to the front of the line, the ushers had just dropped off a new collection of tickets. Ten minutes later, we were sitting two rows from the grass on Centre Court. Since we bought the tickets from the buy back booth, we only paid five pounds each. We sat twenty feet from Pete Sampras for a total of about fifteen US dollars.
Sampras took the match in four sets and he would go on to beat Patrick Rafter in the finals to secure his seventh Wimbeldon Championship.
As a lifelong tennis fan, getting the opportunity to even step foot on the grounds of Wimbledon was amazing. Being able to sit two rows behind one of the greatest tennis players ever was an experience I will always appreciate and never forget.
Click Pete for a rather foppish recap of the match.
I took a tour across Europe after I graduated high school back in 2000. Yes, I know what you're thinking and I am on the seven year plan here at SFSU. Anyway, so our trip started out in London and from there we would go on to Paris, Nice, Lucerne Switzerland (which is the most beautiful city in Switzerland), Venice, Florance, Rome, and then back to London.
So there I was in London checking out the sites and after a long day of walking through Bill Shakespeare's home town, I sat down at the bar in my hotel to have a drink. While watching CNN at the bar they began to play the Wimbledon highlights for the day. At the time, I had been playing tennis for ten years and it was one of my dreams to some day be able to go to Wimbledon. It just so happened that I was seated next to a guy (or bloke as he called himself) that had just gotten back from the current day's play. We got to talking and I learned that I could simply walk up to the ticket window and buy tickets to the day's rounds. The only catch was that all Centre court tickets were not available to the public. I would have to find another way to get on to Centre court.
July 6th, 2000. I am at Wimbledon. I woke up at 5 in the morning so I could get there when the gates opened and I was planning on staying as long as I could. I spent the first couple of hours hoping from one court to the next because at Wimbeldon, there are 20 different courts. This was a big doubles day so my mom and I decided to buy Court 1 tickets to watch Lleyton Hewitt and Kim Clijsters play two Americans. Needless to say, by the end of the day's play, I was hooked.
July 7th, 2000. My mom and I decide to skip the tour of The Tower of London and head back to Wimbledon. We got inside knowledge about a ticket buy back booth at the top of the lawn by Centre Court where tickets that were discarded after a match are resold to anyone in line. To make a long story short, my mom and I were at Wimbledon on the day of the singles semi-final matches. In that day, Agassi would play Rafter and Sampras would play a Russian by the name of Vladimir Voltchkov. We waited in this line for five hours and while we did this, we sat on the lawn and watched one of the best semi final matches in Wimbledon history (Agassi vs. Rafter) which was being broadcast on a huge screen on the back of Centre Court.
Because of the length of the match, people left and dropped their tickets off to be re-sold. It just so happened that when my mom and I got to the front of the line, the ushers had just dropped off a new collection of tickets. Ten minutes later, we were sitting two rows from the grass on Centre Court. Since we bought the tickets from the buy back booth, we only paid five pounds each. We sat twenty feet from Pete Sampras for a total of about fifteen US dollars.
Sampras took the match in four sets and he would go on to beat Patrick Rafter in the finals to secure his seventh Wimbeldon Championship.
As a lifelong tennis fan, getting the opportunity to even step foot on the grounds of Wimbledon was amazing. Being able to sit two rows behind one of the greatest tennis players ever was an experience I will always appreciate and never forget.
Click Pete for a rather foppish recap of the match.
posted by eric at 3:23 PM
0 comments
