Queens Club

In the lead up to Wimbledon, a mens only tournament is held every year at the Queens Club.  Having boss who loves his tennis (and gave me my Wimbledon tickets last year hehehe) meant that our office got a half day off work for 'training' at the Queens Club.  Tee hee!

It's kinda weird that play starts after lunch.  I'm used to tournaments starting at 11 or so.  After a few drinks at the pub (no I don't drink beer), we arrived at the ground at 2pm.  We had left our ticket booking a bit late and were only able to reserve ground passes.  Upon reaching the entrance booths we were told that no more games were being played on the outside courts due to injury and other games finishing early.  Wtf..... !!  It was looking like it we might just have to return to the pub.

We remained standing at the front of the queue for about 15 mins whilst the ticket booth people decided what to do with us and the queue of people growing behind.  I'm happy to say that they reissued us new tickets - on centre court! YAY!!!!!!

My view of the court (right).  For such a well established tournament they've really not put much thought into the seating arrangement.  Obviously my seat was located in one of the corners (not a bad view) but I was conscious of my neck being constantly turned to the left which was not terribly comfortable after a prolonged period.  I tried sitting with my neck not turned and adjusted my eyes to a left gaze but that wasn't comfortable after awhile either.  Why isn't the seating curved at the corners like other tennis show courts?  Crappy seating arrangements are expected on crappy courts but this is Centre Court at Queeeeeeens. Not impressed. 

We made it to our seats just in time to see the remainder of the Andy Murray match.  The Brits go mad for him here; their one and only tennis hope in a long, long time.  He won his match.

I was aware that the ground pass tickets we had were for pretty shit matches so to have Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt rock on, I was pretty pleased that we were gonna get some good play on the court. 

Roddick and Hewitt in for the coin toss. 

Hewitt doing something..... Roddick going in for the shot.

I was egging on Roddick, he seems a cool guy despite marrying a swimsuit model whom he met only after seeing her photo.  Hewitt has always slightly irritated me (C'MON!!) and most often I will side with his opponent anyway.  I walked past his wife, Bec in the grounds.  She looks like she does on TV (that's a compliment). 

Cheesy tourist shot!

I had expected Hewitt to be thrashed but he stuck it out and was in pretty fine form.  Roddick's serve was fairly dominating and he would win points quite easily whereas Hewitt had to fight for a lot of his points.  I was hoping for a third and deciding set but it was over in two.

The scoreboard 7-6, 7-6 Roddick wins!

We finished off the day with a Pimms :D  I didn't care too much for the following match (I don't even know who played but I think it was doubles) so off to the tube I went!