Wimbledon 2004

That's when we saw Roger win his second Wimbledon Men's title after defeating Andy Roddick.  We were actually there!  It was the most exciting tennis I have ever seen.  Cathal Kelly had a wonderful column about Wimbledon in The Globe and Mail yesterday. 

"Wimbledon is the year's premier tennis tournament," he writes.  And it is.  "No other place on Earth seems so purpose-designed to deflect the tawdriness of gossip.  You walk through the gates and everything is just so.  The grounds, the concessions, the flower pots.  Even the people are just so.  The security guards look like they summer in the Cotswolds.  One of them gives your jean jacket a full up-and-down, 'wretched  foreigners' perusal and you feel something like shame.  You should've packed your lime-green slacks and club blazer."

Pretty much it.

He talks about how pristine Wimbledon looks on TV, but in real life it is more so.  That's what I noticed because everyone is so civilized.  The security guards are members of the army, air force and navy -- not rent-a-cops -- and they are "in charge", but quietly.  Two young ladies near us became "over-refreshed" and as a black car drove quietly up, they were simply escorted into it and out.  No fuss, no muss.  It was perfect.  I felt as if I were in Church.

Wimbledon sets the tone and it is, "Mind your Manners".  That's what tennis used to be about when I was a kid and teenager growing up in Ottawa.  You wore white only -- as you still do at Wimbledon -- and you behaved.  Wimbledon is about Wimbledon.  It's platonic and remains the ideal of tennis.  Unfortunately, the Americans got in there and fouled it all up.  Tennis is no longer a game of finesse.  Rather it is a game of baseline pounding until someone hits it out, or into the net.  Gone are the lobs, gone is the beautiful serve-and-volley game of Edberg and Navratilova.  It's all just pound, pound, pound. 

I was glad Sverev was defeated in the first round.  Don't like that rude kid.  Congratulations to Felix Auger-Assilieme.  Will watch with joy as the tournament unfolds.

p.s.  Don't like Pimms.  Yuck.