Let’s Make This a Habit

Jerry Balsam

 

Devoted readers of this blog will recall my efforts to scramble into the gates of the All-England Lawn Tennis Club. In 2016, after years of unsuccessful ballot (i.e., lottery) entries, I got in as a plus-one when my cousin struck paydirt on her first try. I concluded my 2016 dispatch somewhat wistfully:

 

I may never make it back to Wimbledon. From the look of things, there were about 150 people on the queue to collect overseas ballot tickets when the gates opened. Even if there are 500 such winners every day, that makes for only 6,500 tickets over the fortnight – out of, potentially, millions of entries. I can only feel grateful for the opportunity to visit the shrine of tennis and fortunate that the rain held off on my lucky day. With the United Kingdom abuzz about Brexit and its consequences, I happily enjoyed a full day of world-class tennis at the greatest tournament in the world. That’s a memory that will stay with me forever.

 

But now I’ve made it back to the Big W for three consecutive years. In 2022, I benefited from a broadly available resale of unclaimed tickets from winners of the ballot for the Covid-cancelled 2020 tournament. Last year, I was on a B-List that enabled me to score tickets. This year, Wimbledon notified me via email on March 23:

 

With just 100 days to go until The Championships 2024 begin, our balloting process is now complete. However, there are still ways that you can get involved with Wimbledon this year.

 

RETURNED TICKETS
As you entered the ballot for this year’s Championships, you will have access to our Ticket Shop. Please be aware that we do not currently have any tickets available, but they will be added as they are returned. Please do keep checking back. 

 

THE QUEUE
If you are willing to wait, The Queue could be your route to on-the-day tickets to The Championships. 

 

TOURS
You can visit Wimbledon year-round and see iconic locations such as Centre Court, No.1 Court and The Hill, with a guided tour of the Grounds and visit to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.

 

No promises there, just a world of temptation. After weeks of assiduous, not to say obsessive, refreshing of the ticket shop’s website and seeing the word “UNAVAILABLE” in white print on a red background repeated for the four show courts for every day of the fortnight, something changed: On April 17 I was able to purchase No.1 Court tickets for July 9, the second Tuesday of the fortnight. Eight days later, my cousin nabbed Centre Court tickets for July 11, the day of the women’s semifinals. (On July 9, we sat next to a similar American obsessive on No.1 Court. She reported refreshing the website many, many times, until she procured tickets for herself and her husband.)

 

Should you ever get the chance to go this route, you should know that the maximum number of tickets you may buy is two. Crucially, once you buy your two tickets, you’re done. While you may return them, you will not be permitted to buy better tickets should they become available – which is not to say that a plethora of returned tickets show up on the website. That my cousin and I were able to buy tickets may be credited to a combination of good fortune and diligence, to say nothing of the ability and willingness to commit to a transatlantic trip. Such is the allure of Wimbledon that the exertion seems worth it.

 

On our first day at SW19, the allure was a doubles match featuring Coco Gauff and Jessie Pegula on Court 14. Having hustled to the grounds and thence to Court 14 in time to get a seat, I was a little apprehensive when the grounds crew rolled out the tarpaulin, and more so when they turned on their fans to inflate the tarp. But then there was good news: the order had come down not to inflate. Just before 11:00 a.m., when play was scheduled to begin, the order was reversed, and the fans were turned on. What had been a drizzle turned into rain, and the scoreboard announced that play would not begin before noon. After a while, I got realistic and moved to my seat at No.1 Court, where the roof had already been closed. Guess what? The rain did not let up until well into the afternoon, and Gauff and Pegula ended up not playing until Wednesday.

 

The first item on the menu at No.1 Court was a quarterfinal between the lefty qualifier Lulu Sun (who had defeated the top-tenner Qinwen Zheng and Emma Raducanu) and the veteran Donna Vekic, whom I had seen lose a first-round match to Venus Williams on this very court in 2016 – before it had a roof. Wait, what? I went to Wimbledon without any assurance that the weather would allow me to see a match? I guess I was young and foolish.

 

Sun and Vekic both served hard and banged away at their groundstrokes, with very little by way of finesse or net play. Vekic has two interesting habits I had not noticed before. First, when she warms up with phantom groundstrokes, either before or during the match, she mimics her standard righty forehand and then a lefty forehand. (Italicized hyperlinks denote photographs – in this instance, one taken before Vekic’s semifinal match.) Second, when she lines up to serve, she places her left foot inside the baseline and then pulls it back to safety before beginning her motion.

 

Sun soldiered through a very long service game to get to 2-2, saving three break points along the way. In the eleventh game, she was the first to draw blood, when a serve-plus-one by Vekic went awry on break point, her forehand sailing long. Serving for the first set, Sun saved a break point with a 110 mph service winner up the T and, two points later, clinched the set with a rare gentle touch, a backhand drop shot.

 

In the second set, the script was reversed, with Vekic breaking for a 5-3 lead but then being broken in turn in a twelve-point game that featured five double faults. (Vekic served only one other double in the match.) Notwithstanding that very nervous service game, Vekic bounced back and took the set, 6-4, breaking Sun with a backhand passing shot.

 

As the match wore on, Vekic’s grunting grew louder, and even sounded more like a screech, but only in Sun’s service games. When Vekic was serving, the sound was more of a forceful exhalation. Whether this is deliberate gamesmanship or an unintentional reaction to stress is an open question.

 

In the third set, Vekic pulled away. The first break of serve came on a Sun double fault, the second on a serve-plus-one forehand gone long. By the time Sun finally held serve at 0-5, Vekic had turned down the volume on the grunts, and then she held serve at love for a 5-7 6-4 6-1 victory, punching the ticket to her first major semifinal.

 

Popping Champagne corks were a feature of the fortnight, to the extent that an umpire’s admonition to refrain made the news. Throughout my three days at Wimbledon, I heard dozens of corks popping, including one that clanged off the roof of No.1 Court before the start of the next match, between the defending champion, Carlos Alcaraz, and Tommy Paul. At least that flying cork did not land on the court.

 

Paul withstood four break points in the opening game before Alcaraz broke his serve the next time around. But this was not to be a walk in the park for Alcaraz, as Paul promptly broke back at love and fended off one break point in the seventh game and two in the ninth. In the twelfth game, it was Alcaraz staring down a break – and set – point, and Paul needed only that one opportunity, with a backhand passing shot sealing the deal.

 

The possibility of Alcaraz’s being dethroned loomed larger when he fell behind by 2-0 in the second set, but he turned the tables with breaks in the third and seventh games, serving out the set at love to tie the match.

 

The third set opened with three consecutive breaks of serve, two of them by Alcaraz. With Paul serving at 2-4, Alcaraz padded his lead with a down-the-line backhand return of a second serve for an insurance break. Alcaraz served out the set at love.

 

Alcaraz broke serve two more times in the fourth set, the first time when a challenge by Paul showed that his crosscourt forehand missed the line by a few blades of grass, the second when Paul’s forehand down the line went wide. Alcaraz served 18 points in the set, winning 16, to seal a comeback victory, 5-7 6-4 6-2 6-2. As he had earlier in the tournament when Frances Tiafoe had taken a lead and was within sight of the finish line, Alcaraz steadied the ship and, by the conclusion, won going away. The pattern would be repeated in the semifinal, when Alcaraz dropped the first set to Daniil Medvedev – the last set he would drop on the way to defending his title.

 

Next up was the men’s doubles match between a team I had seen last year, Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow, seeded twelfth, and the eighth seeds, Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz. As an observer of a certain age, I appreciated Puetz’s appearance, which a friend characterized as that of one comfortable in his own skin: a bald pate and what seemed like a mile of kinesiotape on his left knee. And to think he’s a mere lad of 36! What’s more, he played quite well, especially on return of serve.

 

The teams played a lot of serve-and-volley, which would not have been worth mentioning for a doubles match at Wimbledon during my youth. The singles players typically served and volleyed then, and it was not even a question for the doubles players. All that has changed, of course. In this match, Krawietz and Puetz regularly played the I formation in their service games, keeping the receivers guessing as to where it was safe to return. When Puetz served, he often followed his delivery to the net even when Krawietz started the point crouched at the net, in spite of leaving the team more vulnerable to a lob.

 

The biggest difference-maker on the stat sheet for this match was first serve percentage: Krawietz and Puetz made 79% of their first deliveries, as compared to only 47% for Lammons and Withrow. (For what it’s worth, Withrow often broke 130 mph on the speed gun.) Each team had five break points, but only Krawietz and Puetz converted any of the opportunities, once in each set. At 3-4 in the first set, Lammons missed a forehand drop volley; at 1-1 in the second set, he was broken at love with the assistance of two double faults. Krawietz and Puetz prevailed by 6-3 6-4.

 

The day concluded with women’s doubles, as the US Open champions, Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe, faced Marta Kostyuk and Elena-Gabriela Ruse, a team that had made the semifinals in the 2023 Australian Open and at Roland Garros earlier this year. Despite Kostyuk and Rouse’s prior successes, they were overmatched here, going down 6-3 6-1. Fashionistas, however, got to learn about Kostyuk’s tennis dress, which Wilson modeled on her wedding gown.

 

Kostyuk and Ruse had seven break points, but failed to convert even one. Dabrowski and Routliffe won four of their six break points. The frustration for Kostyuk and Ruse began in the seventh game, when Routliffe – who is a shade under six feet tall and tosses the ball very high – came back from 0-40 and ultimately saved four break points. In the next game, Ruse missed two easy balls and Kostyuk was broken. In the second set, Kostyuk dropped serve twice and Ruse did so once, the only highlight for their team coming when Ruse took a page out of Sasha Bublik’s book and won a point with an underhand serve. After the fortnight, Routliffe found herself ranked number 1 in doubles, although she and Dabrowski lost the final to Taylor Townsend and Katerina Siniakova. Siniakova has now won nine major titles in women’s doubles; her erstwhile partner Barbora Krejcikova (about whom much more later) has seven, plus three in mixed doubles.

 

With tickets in hand for a return visit to Wimbledon on Thursday, my cousin and I decided to go for a trifecta by queuing for tickets on Wednesday. Here are some pro tips. First, if it’s Centre Court or bust for you, you had better arrive at the queue by nightfall. We were told that the first 500 people had camped out by that time on Tuesday – and 500 is the number of Centre Court tickets allocated to the queue. Second, the Tube does not begin to run until 5:00 a.m. You’ll want to get to the queue by then for a shot at No.1 Court, so remember this intersection: Wimbledon Park Road and Woodspring Road. Request that destination from Uber, and you’ll be dropped off at Car Park 10, where you’ll find the entrance to the queue. Third, bring a blanket or some other item to sit on. You won’t want to stand for hours, and you probably won’t want to sit directly on the grass. (Pro tip 3(a): It would be nice if the blanket were waterproof, at least on days, like Wednesday, when the ground was still wet from Tuesday’s extensive rain.)

 

After getting under three hours of sleep, my cousin and I made it to the queue at 4:48 a.m. That sufficed to get us Queue Cards 704 and 705, which meant we were destined for tickets on No.1 Court. Right behind us were a couple from Edmonton, the husband leaving no doubt as to their hometown by wearing an Oilers cap. They were quite an intrepid pair, with the wife having run multiple marathons.

 

The queue is designed to get spectators onto the grounds shortly after the gates open at 10:00 a.m., and it achieved that goal on Wednesday. New this year was the Queue Village, which offers a place for those who have successfully queued to buy refreshments, get some freebies from corporate sponsors, and sit down in comfortable chairs.

 

Fortune smiled on my cousin and me this year. Those who camped out for Centre Court tickets ended up not seeing a men’s singles quarterfinal, as Alex De Minaur had not recovered from a hip injury sustained at the end of his fourth-round win over Arthur Fils and gave Novak Djokovic a walkover. (We won’t talk about Djokovic’s paranoid insistence that fans who had cheered for Holger Rune were in fact booing Djokovic.) We were to end up with the match between Taylor Fritz and Lorenzo Musetti, which was not moved to Centre Court.

 

Our day began on Court 18 with men’s doubles between the teams of Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson and Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni. Purcell was a Wimbledon doubles champion in 2020, alongside Matthew Ebden, and has been ranked as high as 40 in singles. Thompson’s high-water mark in singles was 32, earlier this year. Molteni has always been a doubles specialist; Gonzalez, age 40, had once been a top-100 singles player. Gonzalez has a tattoo on his left calf that says “ROMA,” and another on his left arm that I could not make out.

 

Purcell and Thompson took the lead in the fifth game, as Thompson sliced an awkward one-handed backhand down the line to break Gonzalez. Neither this nor any other heroics prompted the expected chant of “Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi.” That one break of serve sufficed to clinch the first set.

 

In the first game of the second set, Purcell became very upset with the chair umpire, Kelly Rask (who would later be in the chair for the women’s singles final), and I think with reason. With Molteni serving at break point in the first game, Rask overruled the linesperson and called the serve a fault – as Thompson hit a backhand return for a winner. Purcell insisted that the serve had been good, and so it was confirmed on a challenge. The result: replay the point, first serve for Molteni. In short, the Aussies were penalized for being right. If they had said nothing, Rask’s improvident overrule would have stood, and Molteni would have faced second serve. If Rask had not overruled, moreover, Thompson’s winner would have counted and the Aussies would have broken serve. (There is an argument to be made that Rask’s overrule did not affect play, and Thompson’s winner should have stood regardless, but the umpire was not buying it.)

 

This was something of a recurring theme during my days at Wimbledon: umpires overruling linespersons. There once was a time when overrules were reserved for plain errors. Now, with replay technology available, we see that some of the overrules, even when they are correct, take place on balls that are very close to the line. Does the umpire in the chair really have a better view of those balls than the linesperson?

 

More important, with replay technology available to call the lines almost instantaneously, why are we going through these gyrations? Why should players have to husband their challenges, lest they run out, when the correct answer (or, at least, the closest we can come to a correct answer) is available to the umpire? Is calling lines astutely an ancillary skill that tennis pros should be required to master?

 

The good news is that the ATP will go with electronic line calling in 2025. Whether the Grand Slam events will go along – as the Australian Open has since 2021 – remains to be seen.

 

After Purcell’s brouhaha with the umpire, the Aussies went on to break serve a couple of points later. They reached match point when Molteni was serving at 3-5 30-40, but Gonzalez knocked off a forehand volley to prolong the match. Purcell served for the match at 5-4, but Molteni hit a winning service return at 30-30 and then Purcell missed an easy forehand for the break.

 

The match went to a tiebreak. With Gonzalez serving at 5-6, Molteni saved match point with a drop volley. Gonzalez and Molteni saved a third match point at 7-8 when Purcell sent a backhand long. The Argentine team took the next two points, as well, winning the set on a forehand volley winner by Molteni.

 

The Aussies jumped out quickly in the third set, as Molteni dropped serve in the second game when he sent a backhand volley long. When Purcell served for the match a second time, let was called on his first two serves but the third bomb was a winner. He made no mistake, holding at love to close out the match, 6-4 6-7(8) 6-3. I thought he might get back into his argument with the umpire after the match, but he shook hands with her and went on his way. By the end of the fortnight, Purcell narrowly missed his second Wimbledon title and Thompson his first, as they failed to convert three championship points and fell to Harri Heliövaara (who had been retired from tennis from 2013 to 2017) and Henry Patten, 6-7(7) 7-6(8) 7-6(9).

 

When I took my seat on No.1 Court, a quarterfinal between two former Roland Garros champions was underway, with Barbora Krejcikova (I did promise we’d get back to her) serving at 6-4 1-2 to Jelena Ostapenko. Ostapenko, always a character, was grunting loudly and getting support from a fan who kept on shouting: “Os-ta-pen-ko, Alona, devai.” (Jelena is Ostapenko’s legal name, but she is known to friends and family as Alona; “devai” is my best attempt at spelling the encouragement, possibly in Latvian, that the fan was yelling.)

 

As had been my experience with the queue in 2023, success merits very good seats. Last year, I was in the second row on No.1 Court, while this year I had to make do with the third row. Once again, I was behind and to the right of the umpire’s chair, between the service line and baseline. If you succeed on the queue, you get good seats, and thus the television cameras at Wimbledon don’t show a bunch of empty seats near the court. Those who queue care enough about tennis to actually watch the matches.

 

Krejcikova has an interesting style. When she’s pulled wide and has to recover, she’s more likely to hit a slice from the forehand side than from the backhand. Perhaps the stability provided by two hands on the racquet enables her to drive the backhand more readily. She was clearly comfortable on the backhand side, often hitting backhands while standing slightly to the right of the center mark.

 

Ostapenko, an aggressive ball-striker, broke serve for 3-1 and fended off three break points to hold for 4-1. But she is prone to double faults, two of which helped Krejcikova break back in the seventh game. At 3-4, Krejcikova saved two break points and tied the set, allowing herself a fist pump. Things got even better for her when she broke Ostapenko for a 5-4 lead, capturing the game with a crosscourt forehand service return that caught the corner, as verified when Ostapenko challenged the call. Ostapenko did not give up, and she broke back for 5-5 when Krejcikova double faulted.

 

The set went to a tiebreak and Ostapenko took the first mini-break when Krejcikova netted a backhand at 1-1. Krejcikova promptly took two points on Ostapenko’s serve, first on a backhand that Ostapenko dropped into the net and then on a crosscourt forehand winner. Serving at 3-5, Ostapenko missed another backhand to give Krejcikova three match points, the first two on Krejcikova’s serve. She needed two, first missing a forehand but on the next point watching Ostapenko’s service return go long. The final score was 6-4 7-6(4), and I knew I’d be seeing Krejcikova again on Thursday, in the semifinals.

 

Next up was a men’s quarterfinal, between Taylor Fritz and Lorenzo Musetti, seeded 13th and 25th, respectively. Both players became fathers at a young age: Fritz when he was 19, Musetti earlier this year, at 22. When there was less money in tennis, not to mention the days when the money was paid under the table, parenthood – certainly motherhood – came at the end of, or after, a career. Now, tennis and family can coexist to a greater extent, albeit not in Fritz’s case, as he is divorced from Raquel Pedraza, the mother of his son.

 

Musetti’s path through the draw was eased when the sixth seed, Andrey Rublev, was knocked out by Francisco Comesana in the first round, but there was no quibbling with Musetti’s win over Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard – sure to be a difficult opponent on grass for years to come – in the fourth round. Fritz, for his part, had knocked out the fourth seed, Alexander Zverev, after which Fritz’s significant other, Morgan Riddle, threw some (well-deserved, in my opinion) shade at Zverev.

 

Musetti, who came onto court with his left knee wrapped, has a beautiful backhand, its aesthetic qualities surely enhanced by the rarity of a one-hander these days. Early in the match, the topspin version of the stroke was misfiring, but he was able to use the slice to keep the ball low and out of the powerful Fritz’s strike zone. Fritz took an early 3-1 lead when Musetti missed a sitter forehand and then misfired on a backhand passing shot. Fritz served out the set at love, closing with an ace.

 

Early in the match, one of the law enforcement officials patrolling the court mentioned during a changeover that, if we turned around, we could see the Queen. I blurted out, in all sincerity and naïveté: “But the Queen is no longer with us.” I am not a sufficient devotee of the British monarchy to have focused on Camilla’s having been styled Her Majesty the Queen since May 2023. Presumably, she ventured from the Royal Box on Centre Court to somewhat less exalted seating on No.1 Court because of Alex de Minaur’s walkover.

 

In the second set, play was delayed when a woman in the front row across the court from me became unwell from heat exhaustion. While the temperature barely exceeded 70° Fahrenheit (or 21° Celsius) during my entire stay in London, and while the weather was often cloudy or rainy, when the sun shone, it was strong. I felt it on my back, which was easier to cope with than having the sun in one’s face.

 

When play resumed, Fritz jumped out ahead by breaking serve in the first game, only for Musetti to come right back. Musetti took a second break to go up 5-3, but when he served to even the match, he was broken at love, the concluding point ending when Fritz chased down a drop shot and then put away a backhand overhead. At 4-5, Fritz saved a set point with a big serve, and the set eventually went to a tiebreak. Musetti grabbed a mini-break with a down-the-line backhand that, as revealed upon Fritz’s challenge, caught the outside of the line. That was the only point to go against serve in the tiebreak. Serving at 3-6, Fritz saved two set points, but lost the set when he failed to return a second serve from Musetti – a serve that, the challenge replay showed, caught the service line.

 

In the first game of the third set, Musetti broke serve with a crosscourt forehand drop shot. He grabbed a second break, at love, for a 4-1 lead, and served out the set, 6-2.

 

At the start of the fourth set, Musetti saved a break point with a forehand lob volley. Fritz saved four break points in the fifth game. At 3-4, Musetti saved a first break point with an ace but then misfired on a forehand to allow Fritz to serve for the set, which he did, at love, sending the match to a deciding set.

 

Momentum is a tricky phenomenon, and in Fritz’s case, it was illusory. In the fifth set, Musetti held serve, broke with an inside-in forehand winner, held again, broke again with a backhand pass following a rare serve-and-volley foray by Fritz, and held at love for 5-0. Fritz then held serve to avoid the dreaded bagel, but Musetti was not deterred. He hit a drop shot at 30-15 and Fritz fell heavily while trying to chase it down. The umpire, Damien Dumusois, came down from his chair to see if Fritz could continue. He was to swing his racquet but once more, hitting a forehand return of serve long and allowing Musetti to celebrate a 3-6 7-6(5) 6-2 3-6 6-1 victory and his first trip to a Grand Slam semifinal. (For his part, Fritz has been to the fourth round at Roland Garros and the quarterfinals of the other Slams, but never further.) Here was a case of a player with greater firepower being flummoxed by subtlety and variety. Nor was it a lucky win. A metric I like to look at is return points won, and Musetti enjoyed a significant edge in that department, 38% to 33%. Here was also a case of a fan screaming encouragement from right behind me: a woman in the fourth row repeatedly bellowed, “Vamos, Lorenzo,” which cannot be proper Italian. (Google Translate suggests “Andiamo.”)

 

My final match of the day was a mixed doubles affair in which the sixth-seeded team and 2021-2022 champions, Neal Skupski and Desirae Krawczyk, took on the veteran Fabrice Martin and his partner, Cristina Bucsa. The match featured some excellent exchanges with all four players at net.

 

Krawczyk, a lefty, played the deuce court, so her team had forehands in the middle of the court. The towering Martin, a throwback with a one-handed backhand, has an interesting habit. When he is the net man, he first places his left hand on his thigh before finally moving it to the throat of the racquet. Martin was broken in the first game of the match, and then a second time at 3-5, a double fault finishing off the set.

 

While the sun sets quite late in London in July, it was beginning to get dark as the first set ended, presumably because the stands on No.1 Court were blocking the sun. Thus, the roof was closed, in fits and starts, before the second set began. Bucsa saved two break points at 1-2 and another two at 3-4 before Krawczyk successfully poached on a third opportunity to give Skupski the chance to serve out the match. That he did, for the loss of one point, with the final score being 6-3 6-3.

 

The mixed doubles event was way behind schedule because of all the rain, with the final being pushed back from the second Thursday of the fortnight to the final Sunday. Therefore, yet another mixed doubles match was announced for a 9:00 p.m. start. Based on the players and the score, I think it was a good one, but sleep-deprived, I departed before it began. For the record, Michael Venus and Erin Routliffe defeated Henry Patten and Olivia Nicholls, 5-7 7-5 [11-9]. While Wimbledon plays out the final set in doubles, this year’s bad weather necessitated going straight to a match tiebreak, in lieu of a full third set, in mixed doubles matches played before the final.

 

On Thursday, it was time for my first visit of the year to Centre Court. Walking through the narrow corridor atop the stadium, I was reminded of seeing Serena Williams’s final Wimbledon match two years ago, and I thought once again that this shrine of tennis would never be deemed up to code in the United States, where the risk of a stampede in such a tight space would not be tolerated. Our seats were in Row W, but behind a corner of the court and facing the Royal Box, so not bad at all.

 

The first two matches on the agenda were the women’s semifinals. With the tournament now in the books, it is hard to add anything to the many available press accounts, or the excellent highlight videos provided by Wimbledon. (And that is to say nothing of the extended highlight videos that are available.)

 

In both matches, a power hitter (Donna Vekic, 2022 champion Elena Rybakina) took the first set over a player who relies more on finesse (Jasmine Paolini, Barbora Krejcikova). In both, it was hard to imagine the finesse player coming back, as the power player was consistently holding serve with ease. In both, the tide turned.

 

In the first semifinal, the crowd was plainly behind Paolini after her plucky run to the Roland Garros final and in appreciation of her bouncy, upbeat appearance on the court. Vekic breezed through the first set, serving it out at love. After that, each player saved some break points before we got to the business end of the second set. With Vekic serving at 3-4, there was a commotion behind us, toward the top row of the stadium. A woman was choking and someone administered the Heimlich maneuver – happily, successfully. Serving at 4-5, Vekic made only one of five first serves, double faulted once, and saw Paolini take the set with a forehand winner off a short ball.

 

The third set was an epic, taking 85 minutes. Vekic broke serve in the first game, but Paolini later broke back for 3-3. Vekic broke for 4-3, Paolini for 4-4. After Paolini held at love for 5-4, Vekic averted a match point when Paolini missed her return of a 111 mph serve. The eleventh game was sixteen points long, with Paolini saving two break points, both times when Vekic misplayed backhand returns of serve. At 5-6, 30-40, Vekic saved a second match point with a brave forehand down the line before holding on for 6-6.

 

Thus, the contest would be decided by a match tiebreak. The rules provide that the winner of a match tiebreak must get to ten points with a margin of two. Even had this been a regular tiebreak, we would have gone to the same length, because neither player could open a substantial lead. (This assumes that nothing would have gone differently if it had been an ordinary tiebreak, which is probably an invalid hypothesis.) Vekic got the first edge in the match tiebreak when Paolini double faulted at 1-2, but Vekic missed an inside-out forehand at 3-2 to even the tally. The next eleven points went to the server. It was only with Vekic serving at 8-9 that the streak was broken. She pulled a forehand wide, and Paolini had won the longest women’s semifinal in Wimbledon history, 2-6 6-4 7-6(8).

 

Because of Vekic’s dominance in the first set, this was a Simpson’s Paradox match, as the winner garnered only 111 points, compared to the loser’s 118. Vekic’s loss of traction – or Paolini’s gain, depending on how you look at it – is reflected in Vekic’s winning percentage on her second serve points. In the first set, she took 75% of those points; in the second, 36%; in the third, 30%. (Those who watched the match on television learned that Vekic’s forehand speed dropped considerably as the match went on, as she struggled with forearm pain.) In none of the sets could Paolini do as well on first serve as Vekic, but in the third she managed to win 55% of her second serve points. Vekic was gutted by the defeat, and it is hard to watch her press conference.

 

In the second semifinal, Rybakina sprinted to a 4-0 lead over Krejcikova. Perhaps foreshadowing what was to follow, Krejcikova broke when Rybakina served at 4-0 and at 5-1. The third break of serve that Rybakina had secured when Krejcikova served at 1-4 proved crucial, as the former champion closed out the set, 6-3.

 

When Rybakina’s game was flowing, she had far more than a big serve to offer – though she did strike five aces in the first set. Her groundstrokes were reliable, her backhand consistent. Krejcikova could win only 11 of her 28 service points in the set.

 

In the second set, Krejcikova, an outstanding doubles player, began to mix in some serve-and-volley. A roving cameraman meandered through our section, getting permission from spectators to shoot video of them watching the match. In her first three service games, Krejcikova saved break points. When she got a look at a break point on Rybakina’s serve, she needed only one opportunity. It took six set points for Krejcikova to wrap up the proceedings, but she sent the match to a deciding set when Rybakina netted a backhand. Rybakina actually won a higher percentage of service points in the second set: 57%, as opposed to 56% in the first set. But look at how Krejcikova turned things around, winning 62% of her service points, compared with only 39% in the first set.

 

As the sun shone into the Royal Box in the third set, straw hats were the order of the day. There was only one break point in the set. Rybakina served at 3-3 15-30, and Krejcikova hit a big crosscourt forehand that Rybakina could not handle. At 15-40, Rybakina sliced a backhand approach shot that found the net, and Krejcikova had the edge she needed. She recovered from 0-30 to hold for 5-3 and then served out the match at love, 3-6 6-3 6-4.

 

As is often the case, the big points dictated the outcome. Rybakina converted 3 of 9 break points. Krejcikova got more mileage out of fewer opportunities: 4 of 6. When it was all over, the beneficiaries of the straw hats left them on their seats in the Royal Box, while Jan Kodes joined the celebration in the Friends’ Box, as he had done last year for Marketa Vondrousova. He must be a good luck charm, as Krejcikova was to follow in Vondrousova’s sneaker prints as an unlikely Wimbledon champion.

 

After the high drama of the two semifinals, the day – and my Wimbledon excursion for 2024 – concluded with dessert, a “Ladies’ Invitation Doubles” match between the 2023 champions, Kim Clijsters and Martina Hingis, and a new team, Agnieszka Radwanska and Francesca Schiavone. Last year, Schiavone had partnered Roberta Vinci; this year, Vinci played with Zheng Jie. (The change in partnership may have been a decision by the tournament, not the players.) The event is not necessarily for old-timers: the field this year included Ash Barty (28 years old), Laura Robson (30), CoCo Vandeweghe (32), Jo Konta (33), Radwanska (35), and the always interesting Andrea Petkovic (36).

 

A blow-by-blow account of the match would be rather beside the point, considering how much fun the players were having. Clijsters still hits the ball hard and Hingis still is a brilliant doubles player. They cruised to victory, 6-3 6-2, never facing break point so far as I can recall, and went on to defend their title without dropping a set.

 

Having left my family in New York while I was in London, I visited the Wimbledon Shop to buy a last-minute gift when play concluded. (Last year, the zipper on my carry-on bag burst when I tried to stuff it with Wimbledon purchases. This year, the last-minute gift was a 2024 Wimbledon tote bag and the zipper survived.) Considering how this Wimbledon went, it was almost fitting that my final walk of the year to the Southfields Tube station was punctuated by a burst of heavy rain. If you’re going to get soaked, Wimbledon is the place to do it. Here’s hoping I get a chance to dodge London raindrops next July.