Watching Ace Tennis stars @ Wimbledon

It's that time of the year when all the tennis aces come to the Mecca of Tennis. Obviously it's a great time for the fans as well to get an eyeful of the top players and top class tennis at the traditional home of tennis. Hard to get tickets to the later stages of the matches, but it's a matter of an hour or so of waiting in the looong queue to get the tickets for the same day's entry to the open smaller courts. With the Indian mixed-doubles pair of Sania Mirza and Mahesh Bhupathi playing last saturday, thought it's a good time to go and experience Wimbledon ambiance for the first time.

I quite liked the ambiance, with the loud crowd cheers and applauses coming from the big arena style courts nearby where top players showing their class..(at that time world #2 Rafael Nadal was in there at the Centre Court), and all those small capacity open courts where you can get quite close to the action.. the classy grass courts with some leggy ladies smashing and punching fists and those aggressive boom-serving guys hitting the ball and you can hear it wooshing past and almost feel the power in the air, and the traditional touch of the officials' uniforms looked cool.. Then there would be an occassional small cluster of moving buzzing crowd clicking and flashing.. you zoom into it, and you can notice the security personnel escorting the players on their way into or out of the courts..

We were just in time for the Sania-Mahesh Vs the Russian pair of Andreev-Kirilenko in the 2nd round Mixed-Doubles. Sania looked sharp, hit some brilliant strokes and quite focused returns from the powerful high speed serves and returns of the the Russian guy.. You could feel her obvious talent but you could also sense that for some reason she looked that wee bit less desperate to win; the die-hard spirit wasn't quite there, and the all-out fight mentality didn't quite come up after the well contested first set.. Tight first set went into tie-breaker, 6-7 and in the second the Russians wrapped it up 3-6. May be Sania was preserving her energy for her other draws in the Singles and ladies-doubles where she might have fancied progressing to further rounds ?? Not sure. But she did progress to the Quarter Finals of ladies' doubles with another US player Bethanie, but faced the all-mighty Williams sisters who went on to become champions. Also apparently she went down fighting in the ladies' singles 2nd round against Spaniard Maria Sanches 6-0, 4-6, 9-7.


(As a matter of fact, Mahesh Bhupati had won the men's doubles Wimbledon and French Open titles with Leander Paes in 1999, when they were ranked world #1 doubles. Won French Open again in 2001. So he's been there, done that before, though may be, now only a shadow of that stature is visible.

It was the high point in Indian Tennis, and they would have kept on going further, winning more trophies,inspiring new generation of players. They are quite a formidable team. But unfortunately they've parted ways apparently due to personal differences and no longer play together.In fact Leander played in this year's men's doubles with a US player, reached the semi-final, and mixed doubles with an Aussie lady,and went out in 2nd round.. That match was going on while I was there but was on Court 1 for which you need to get separate and more-in-demand tickets, so couldn't make it).

Eventually the men's singles champion this year turned out to be Rafael Nadal, beating #1 Roger Federer in the longest final in the history of Wimbledon.. it is The Highest Quality tennis I've ever watched..(on TV), Ever!.
[More Photos from the outing is here]