"Wimbledon - Home of The Champi ..." a Wimbledon Travel Page by alucas

Liz and I have been lucky enough to go to Wimbledon many times, and have seen many of the great players of the eighties and nineties. We first went in 1980, and then every year until 1991. During those years my father-in-law was a Steward at Wimbledon, and was able to get tickets for us every year. We saw three mens finals, and quite a few mens and ladies semi-finals in this period.

We have been a few times since, but nowadays we have to rely on getting tickets in the public ballot, or the LTA ballot, as seats for the showcourts are many times over-subscribed. This has enabled us to see some of the current players, including Henman, Nalbandian, Davenport and Venus Williams.

I have scanned some of my old pictures, and have created a travelogue of some of the stars of the eighties, and will add more pictures year by year - assuming we get tickets !

The tips on this page are SOLELY about the tennis - and are based on our own experiences / observations, backed up with up-to-date facts (eg ticket prices) from the Wimbledon website.

Liz managed to get us tickets throught the LTA ballot (not the public ballot) for the second Monday. This was one of the best days at Wimbledon that I can remember for good quality matches, with Centre, No 1, and Court 13 having really top quality matches. We had seats on Court 2 though, but still saw three good singles matches, featuring David Nalbandian (conqueror of Andy Murray) and Richard Gasquet, Venus Williams and Jill Craybas (who put out Serena WIlliams), and finally Sebastian Grosjean playing Dmitry Tursunov (who knocked out Tim Henman).

Yes, went to Wimbledon again this year. Tickets from the LTA ballot again, and No 2 Court again. Missed the worst of the heatwave but it was still hot and humid, if cloudy for much of the day.

We saw some very good doubles matches, featuring some well-known names, including Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi in the mens, and Liezel Huber / Martina Navratilova against Elena Likhovtseva / Anastasia Myskina in the ladies. The last match on Court 2 was a hard-fought mixed doubles match, and featured Jie Zheng - who won the Australian ladies doubles earlier this year, and might even win at Wimbledon.