Wimbledon Tennis Championships 2021

Youngest sister  having kindly treated me to spend the day with her at Wimbledon Tennis this week, I recalled that I had not attended the tennis championships there for some 40 years.

However I did take the same sister with me to the Olympic Games 2012 tennis semi-finals at Wimbledon, which were excellent as was the Davis Cup tennis in Madrid to which she again treated me: Davis Cup tennis at Madrid in 2019, though  perhaps because of the outdoors venue, I preferred the earlier Davis  tournament at Queen's, which we both attended in 2015: Queens Davis Cup 2015. I believe the Davis Cup venues have been reorganised possibly for commercial reasons or possibly to make the tennis more widely available for  European audiences or perhaps both.

However Wimbledon Tennis Championships 2021 were excellent with the mood being enhanced by the crowds being welcomed back in as Covid-19 restrictions are slowly being relaxed. Last year of course Wimbledon Tennis was entirely cancelled because of the pandemic though the Wimbledon authorities, alone among the major venues had pandemic insurance, which ensured that they did not suffer financially overmuch.

Interestingly, in addition to Covid-19 vaccination records, one was supposed to have an electronic ticket to gain admission to the grounds. A trouble about the latter  though is that for iPhones, only on a more up to date version of the iPhone (mine is an old but normally perfectly serviceable iPhone6) naturally costing £s, could the ticket be downloaded. 

As  an old iPad was capable of displaying the ticket I assumed that would be fine but of course that was not the case as internet access was required which I had not set up. This proved no problem however as the ticket office happily down loaded a paper ticket for me. 

The first match we watched on Court 2 was that between Canadian  Bianca Andreescu and Alize Cornet who is French.

The match  turned out to be  exciting games between the two ladies and extremely entertaining to watch. Eventually and surprisingly at least to me, Bianca Andreescu who was seeded fifth, was beaten 6-2, 6-1 by Alize Cornet.

We then watched Cameron Norrie's win over Australian wild card Alex Bolt 6-3, 6-1,6-2. Norrie lost his first 3 games against Bolt, so we expected a poor result (from a British viewpoint). However thankfully that expectation proved entirely incorrect

Youngest sister Steph was honorary chief scorer for the day as the picture to the right, illustrates:

Lunch then beckoned. Having heard much about the cost of food at Wimbledon I was pleased to find it not as costly as feared and the quality was excellent. I can see why the strawberries and cream are so popular.

Walking around the estate was probably far easier than would have been the case in pre-Covid-19 seasons, given the crowds were slightly reduced.

A trip to Henman Hill followed 

Also some shopping which I resisted though the shop has been vastly improved since my last visit there some 30 years ago. Steph bought herself a natty Wimbledon towel.

Overall the day was wonderful and time flew by.