Great report, Zed, and welcome.

Just curious - why were you there to see Gabi so specially? What is it about Gabi - do you have some connection?

I was at Wimbledon yesterday, arrived in the queue before 6am when the car park wasn't even open which gave us a brief problem. I was number 29xx - can't remember exactly. I try to go on either the first Monday or Tuesday specifically to watch our British players. Started off watching Jay - good battle, Gulbis distracted by every little thing, - left at the end of set 4 to watch Gabi and Katie on ct 14. Unfortunately we chose to queue the wrong side (media centre side) where lots of seats are reserved for coaches and player's guests so there was virtually no movement and I spent the whole match by the steps up to the court near a rather too enthusiastic Bouchard supporter. I could see some of the match at one end of the court by set 3 but wasn't really in a position to offer vocal support. I did manage to get on court for Katie's match which was enjoyable until she dropped serve at the end of set 2. Needed to leave the court to get out of the sun for a bit so headed to ct 12 later for Heather's match with at least one set left of Jack Sock's match to be played. As it happened, it was lucky we didn't quite get onto that court as they promptly changed Heather's match to ct 14. Managed to get there before too many people realised so watched to the end. Heather made a great recovery at love 3 down in set 2 with good aggressive play then made wrong shot choices at 4-4 to lose her serve again. She gave her head and equipment bag a good pounding with her racquet. There was one overly vocal supporter in her 'box'. Sometimes it's more annoying than supportive. Anyway, really just wanted to share that we tried hard to support Gabi and others, but it's not always possible to get anywhere near.

goldfish wrote:

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I spent the whole match by the steps up to the court near a rather too enthusiastic Bouchard supporter.

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 Actually that reminds me... there was a Bouchard supporter on your side of the court in the front row who had his Canadian sweatshirt draped over the railing onto court. It survived maybe quite a lot of the first set before he was told to remove it

KK wrote:

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christ wrote:

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There were no end of complaints when the BBC had the nerve to move Roger off of BBC2 and put some unknown Brit girl (Harriet Dart) on instead on Monday.

www.thesun.co.uk/sport/tennis/6676516/bbc-slammed-federer-red-button-wimbledon/

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Why were the BBC not showing Federer on the main channel?  Probably because the reigning champion winning his first round match very easily is usually one of the least interesting matches of the championship.   I suspect the complainers were Federer fans rather than tennis fans.   Also pretty pathetic.  It's really not that difficult to click a few buttons and see the other courts.   We british tennis supporters have been doing it for years!

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 The story was in the Sun, not the Telegraph or the Times - we must make allowances - clicking buttons is hard !

AliBlahBlah wrote:

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A Murdoch paper overblowing a story to attack and undermine the BBC and generally continue the uninterrupted pattern of the last 50 years of pouring ever yet more poison into the wellspring of British life? Surely not.

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 Is it more believable when reported in the Telegraph?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2018/07/02/bbc-defends-wimbledon-coverage-ditching-roger-federer-match/

I got a Court 3 ticket on Ticketmaster for yesterday (Tuesday), though I didn't set foot on that court all day (do they not realise that C3 tickets will just get treated as expensive ground passes if they don't offer a ground pass option there too? - seems a bit of a waste of a reserved C3 seat) and started off watching Jay on C18 from the resale queue balcony (or whatever they call it), then spent the rest of the day watching the GB women.

I queued for C14 on the side away from the media centre from the middle of the 2nd set of Gabi's match but didn't get in until 2 games from the end (thanks, Gabi, for actually taking it to a 3rd set!) - that side is usually quieter, though it might have been better to go to the end away from Centre Court too instead of the end next to CC. Why oh why, though, do they put Brits on such a small court (I think it seats 480, but that is further reduced by the seats reserved for officials, etc), especially when they're up against a player with a decent fanbase and who seems to arouse a fair bit of curiosity, to put it mildly?

I ended up sitting next to a whole battalion of 'Genie's army', who were making more noise than the rest of the crowd put together. I did my best to answer their "Come on Genie!" with an even louder "Come on Gabi!" (I did hear a few other isolated cheers for her too - I should have assumed they were other forumites and waved LOL) but since I had a sore throat, I probably didn't do much good!

Genie seemed to be playing quite well and Gabi not too badly (she must have played really well in the 2nd), though she was understandably getting a bit frustrated.

I then stayed in for the whole of Katie's match - I wasn't surprised that she won (she was in-form, playing a clay court specialist ranked one place below her who was on a losing streak, after all!), I was more surprised that she didn't win in straight sets, since she was clearly the better player - harder shots and much more variety. Cepede Royg was quite solid, didn't seem to make that many errors and won most of the more tedious rallies, as you might expect, whereas Katie was hitting more winners but also more UFEs - that's the impression I got, anyway, I haven't seen the stats.

Of course, Katie very nearly did win in straight sets and it is to her great credit that having been so close to the line in such an important match only to get pegged back to 1 set all, she kept her head in the decider and made sure of the win in the end

It was useful having a good view of the info screen/scoreboard on the corner of the media centre because I noticed just before the end of Katie's match that they'd put Katy on Centre, which was exciting. The crowds around the grounds hadn't started to thin as I had thought they might given the imminent ENG-COL match, so I ran up the hill & steps to the returns booth. There was a long queue but that turned out to be for Court 1 returns (I think Djokovic had just started there) and it took me all of 3 minutes to get a Centre Court return, and in the 4th row too, diagonally opposite Julie (her mum) and the rest of Katy's team

I'd expected Katy to be really nervous and while I didn't get in until close to the end of the 1st set (hadn't eaten since breakfast and my water had run out, so I had to do something about that first, then managed to get there just at the end of a changeover as they stopped people going in and had to wait for another two games), so I can't comment on how Katy played before that, but she didn't seem nervous at all - in fact, she seemed to be really loving it, which was great to see. She was also battling really hard and giving as good as she got (well almost - she was playing a recent slam champion, after all!)

Katy seemed to have a decent game plan given who her opponent was, which I'd characterise as giving Ostapenko plenty of chance to make errors (the Latvian frequently obliged) but still playing forcefully rather than tentatively (if she'd done the latter, she'd have been blown off the court) - her fightback in the second half of the 2nd set, a set she went so close to taking, was really something and while it was a real pity she didn't manage to close it out, it was more because Ostapenko started playing at her best when it really, really mattered than because Katy's level dropped, and the crowd (admittedly rather sparse, though a lot more than would have fitted into Court 14!) had really warmed to her by the end.

I then headed off to Heather's match but she was on Court 14 (having been originally scheduled for Court 12 only for the match before hers to go on for a very long time), so there was no hope of getting in unless she managed to take it to a 3rd set, which sadly she didn't.

I then wandered off to find some proper food (or the closest it's possible to get to proper food at Wimbledon - even Surbiton puts it in the shade on that score!) before heading to the bar below Centre Court to see if anyone I knew was there (the regular DC attendees I know from AMFF often end up there after a long day and I knew a couple of them were there that day) and ended up at the back of a big crowd watching England lose their lead in the 94th minute on someone's laptop.

I then set off towards Southfields station but changed my mind and detoured back to go up the steep hill towards Wimbledon village in the hope of finding a pub/bar with a screen. The first 3 pubs/5 screens were packed, so I ended up at Hemingways bar (as befits one of Greg Howe's so-called 'aficionados'!) in time to 'enjoy' the penalty shoot-out. As it turned out, it actually was very enjoyable, and the street was thronged with happy people afterwards, lots of singing, all very good-humoured.

Got back to Croydon, happy people there too but rather more drunk (I suppose they had had an extra hour to get tanked up by then) - one guy asks me "Where you goin'?" "Er, home," I said, not slowing down. That turned out to be the answer he's been hoping for - "Yeah, home," he says, "It's coming home, football's coming home!!"

All in all, a decent day's sport!

Out of interest Steven, my husband watched the end of Jay's match then headed to ct 14. He queued on the same side as you but at the non CC end and was at the top of the steps by the end of the match so it probably didn't make any difference. I doubt he got there as quickly as you though.