Inside the All England Tennis Lawn & Croquet Club: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Wimbledon

London.- The United Kingdom has an election next Thursday, but the SW19 district – that’s how the local press calls Wimbledon, in one of those tics that journalists have – lives with its back turned to any ballot box. Here the first two weeks of July only tennis rules, a kind of small UN is set up with people from all over the world and a green and purple environment that appears from the tube line that leads to Southfields, the station where you get off to go to the All England Tennis Lawn & Croquet Club – it will not be named that again, too long for anyone, but this It’s England and it’s not unusual for them to get bombastic – down to the smallest detail of the club.

Nothing really happens on the Saturday before the tournament, but things don’t stop happening all the time either. London welcomes legion of visitors with deceptive sunshine. Weather too pleasant for a place where sooner rather than later the sky will mutate into drizzle, wind and a constant gray threat. Loving this city, as if it were a human being, is accepting it as it is. On Sunday the showers will arrive, which are a headache for the organization.

In the accreditation queues, dozens of volunteers, workers and journalists wait patiently for their turn to get the ribbon that will grant them access. Elevator conversations happenIf you are Spanish, you will have to talk for a while about Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams. The volunteers are young people with acne dressed in green and wearing caps, with a lot of enthusiasm and tedious work.

The Saturday before the tournament, activity is frenetic in the press building. On a terrace on the fourth floor, a dozen sets have been set up for the television stations with rights; the tennis players patiently pass by there, spending five or six minutes with each of the channels. Allows for a couple of general comments and, if the player is an expert in these matters, perhaps a joke and a smile to make himself look good. Opposite is a press room where the best players also pass through, so as not to leave the media without anything to do, as they will not be broadcasting the tournament for the next two weeks.

Then, at around six o’clock, there is a welcome cocktail so that the tribe can get to know each other and socialise. They are naturally divided by country and at the end there is a short speech by one of the tournament’s communications managers. It provides few but dizzying figures, hundreds of media outlets, interviews, and countries in which the tournament will be followed. In the press room, the reporters’ desks are like a beehive, all with their screen on which they can see almost anything and panels on the sides to provide soundproofing as much as possible.

The media building is monumental, like all the facilities in this place. At any other major sporting event, especially ones that only take up a week or two on the calendar, temporary venues and mechanotube facilities abound. This is not the case with Wimbledon, where you don’t have to be very expert to understand that there is a huge amount of money surrounding the tournament.

Everything is made of mortar and brick, it is carefully designed and built with the best qualities. It doesn’t matter that it will only be 15 days of play, Here everything sits on the ground as if it were designed to last a lifetime.Wimbledon even allows itself to forego some sponsorships – it is easily seen on television, with those clean funds on the courts – for pure tradition.

Before everything starts, there is an unmistakable and constant background noise: the mowing machines. In the legitimate interest of the club managers to ensure that everything is perfect, the grass situation goes to the extreme. The players train very little on the tournament courts, because they have to be pampered. The machines go from court to court and in a short walk it is not difficult to find young gardeners with scissors in hand trimming the places that the mower cannot reach, such as the areas where the nets are nailed.

The volunteers

It’s not just the grass, every corner is a riot of flowers, petunias, geraniums. Almost all of them are purple and green, because you have to follow the color palette of the place, which can be seen even in the garbage cans. In this previous weekend there are some details to be resolved, a volunteer with a ladder is dedicated to polishing the places where the tournament tables will be placedNot yet on Saturday, but on Sunday the stickers with the different names and their opponents will appear.

Outside court 1, the enormous screen that presides over a mythical hill in the venue is tested. Fans who do not have tickets to the main courts follow the games there. It’s smaller than it looks on television. In the past it was known as Henman Hillbecause the English were eager for the best of their kind to finally win their tournament. As happens in many other disciplines, the British invented the sport and only achieved with it an almost permanent succession of defeats and disappointments.

The drought in this case lasted from 1936 to 2013, when Murray won. He is one of the protagonists of these early days, as it is most likely that this will be his last time at home and he is a revered athlete here. The two-time champion appears on the Aorangi slopes on Sunday at around 11am for trainingHe arrives with a smile, he has an important press conference scheduled three hours later.

The Aorangi courts are a hive of activity at this time. Players from all over the world train with each other, without any special hierarchy, as fans are not allowed there. In front of the training court 15, two doubles players from Eastern Europe meet, hug each other and ask how they are. They do it in Spanish, which is one of the lingua francas of the tournament, after all there are many players who live or have spent time in Spanish academies.a place of technical excellence and sunshine, perfect for beginners.

On the next track, Emma Raducanu trains in an England soccer jersey. Almost all the headlines in the local press these days are for her, who won the last US Open when she was only 19 years old – three years ago now – and she is British, enough of a mix for everything to revolve around her.

Aorangi is the place where most of the training is done, always thinking about safeguarding the fields where the tournament will be held. Nor have the courts been used for the qualifying phase, which is played in Roehampton, not far from the club. Those who have passed that classification, like Alejandro Moro, are perhaps the happiest people in the entire complex. They are seen turning around with a smile, feeling part of an enormity that their rivals, in many cases, assume almost as a routine.

That may all be about to change, too. All England Tennis is in negotiations to expand and buy an attached golf club. A week after the tournament it will be known exactly what is going to be done there, but in this institution the plans to grow are constant. Djokovic is asked during his press conference and he tells the story in detail. He has asked the tournament, because he is a curious person, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone on earth who knows more about the subject than him.

The weight of the story

Wimbledon is a place steeped in history, a bit like the entire United Kingdom. On almost every corner there are plaques and statues that commemorate milestones or people who passed through there. On the central court it is explained that it was inaugurated by George V, a member of the club. On the 18th, it is said that the longest match in history was played there, the Mahut-Isner match that will forever make them part of tennis history. A few steps away there is a statue of Fred Perry, who, in addition to a well-known clothing brand, was the last Briton to win this tournament before Murray gave them a glass of water in the desert of history.

It hasn’t started yet, there aren’t the crowds that are expected during the week, when this is the event that everyone wants to go to in the city. Along the various paths of the club you can see many members, all dressed in matching suits, with the official tournament tie, as if supervising that, when the noise really starts, everything goes as it should.

2024-06-30 16:12:50
#Wimbledon #tennis #Relief