Posted by Steven on 4/7/2009, 12:04 pm
81.86.247.14
I'm still feeling disappointed about the result this morning, yet on the other hand I had a brilliant day at Wimbledon yesterday despite all the results going the wrong way and I wouldn't have missed it for anything ... which is a good thing, because being lucky enough to get a ticket two rows from the front (on a direct line down from where the players' entourages sit) isn't something that's going to happen more than once in a lifetime!
From where I was sitting, it felt like four players gave it everything. Fed was up near his best, Haas put up a real fight (and was very funny as he got more and more frustrated - put it this way, he was lucky the umpire couldn't speak German 
), Duckboy played an absolute blinder and you couldn't have asked for much more effort from Muzza, and while he wasn't quite at his very best, he lost to 4th best grass court player in the world (who was playing the match of his life) by, basically, 2 points, one of which hinged on a ball going about 2 cm out.
More about that later when I've had a chance to sort out my pics from yesterday, but just to take up the point about the crowd on one of the other threads, I was hoarse by the end of the match (when Andy's asking for support and is that close, you feel like you've got a duty to make damn sure he can hear you! LOL) and plenty of others were shouting out support too, but I did think it was a bit subdued.
Much as it worked out well for me (because it's usually those in the queue who get the tickets that close to the front), I think the reason for the atmosphere not being quite as good as it could have been might be that the tickets at the front are balloted on the last four days instead of people being able to queue for them. We had a flag, but they seemed to few and far between, whereas you'd normally see loads of flags (not to mention lots of nutters dressed up and giving it heaps 
) in the front few rows, so I'm sure the noise levels suffered a bit as well.
There were also, I have to admit, times when it just got so tense that you knew that if you tried to shout, it would come out as more of a croak or a squeak and that might explain why the noise level wasn't louder at some points in the tiebreak.
After the semis, I went for a wander round the grounds to 'recover' and found another match well worth watching, but more about that in the next post.
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