Wimbledon From The Inside… Part Two

 

Originally published on: 26/02/10 14:14

It sometimes strikes me as very odd at how it is possible to be present every day of Wimbledon whilst the Championships are going on, and pretty much see only four very close, very dull walls (no windows, no daylight, no air).

I shall try not to make this a huge moan and make light of my situation, and my intention is to bring you a bit of a ‘backstage’ view of the Championships, but I fear anything I have to report right now could verge on dangerously dull.

Its impossible to concentrate properly while you know there is that much cake in the room

I could describe the contents of our full to bursting fridge in great detail for you, how about that? In fact, ‘The Fridge’ is a bit of an institution in its own right round these parts. It’s really amazing at times watching everyone try to have a meal the poor chiller zone does its best under the circumstances, but it’s currently groaning under the weight of uninteresting sandwiches, Covent Garden soups and Innocent smoothies (for vitamins).

Lunchtimes can get a bit hairy everyone’s metabolisms seems to demand feeding at the same time every day, and with everyone having been up since just gone dawn, it’s a fair call. Just as SW19 draws the crowds, ‘The Fridge’ draws our staff at alarmingly frequent intervals.

Something, I think possibly to do with not being able to concentrate properly whilst you know there is that much cake in the room?

I try to restrain from doing what I’d normally do at home under the circumstances eat the lot so you can relax. I’d like to leave this year’s tournament without having put on six stone but it’s clearly going to be a battle.

Yesterday I went to watch a few games of tennis. Apparently a rather drunk spectator (and this was at 11am!) had promised her show court tickets to one of our staff at the end of the day once she’d had her fill of tennis. I suspect she may have passed out somewhere early doors, and the tickets found their way into my hands just before sundown.

Luck was on my side, a match on that court still going on so I emerged onto Court 1 to see Jankovic’s opponent Olga Savchuk, a pretty blonde girl, begin to stage a bit of a comeback towards the second set of their first round match.

I do enjoy watching Jankovic play, she seems so good-natured and smiley. Granted, she was thrashing poor Olga but as she suddenly realised she wasn’t going to take the second set 6-0, she still had a wry smile on tap as Olga began to put a bit of welly into her groundstrokes and suddenly started controlling her angles with impressive accuracy.

Jankovic was just too good though, and it was a perfect example of how the best players simply just hold their nerve and almost seem to mentally say ‘no, you will not get past me’.

So my next task involves studying a 300-page document, which, once done should hopefully help to inject a bit of incentive into our staff and increase productivity. Best have a bit of cake first I think

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