The Davis Cup

On Saturday, which was a very warm and sunny day, Mark and I went to watch some tennis at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, aka, Wimbledon. As mentioned previously, the tennis club is located nearest Southfields tube station, which is three stations south of Parsons Green, rather convenient for us! The Davis Cup - which I was previously ignorant of - seems to be somewhat similar to the Ryder Cup in golf. It's essentially country's playing against each other in teams. Saturday's match was Great Britain versus Austria in men's doubles.

The 'other' Murray was playing - Jaimie - as well as some other dude that I decided to call 'headband'. Wimbledon consists, of course, of lots of courts, with the main two being Centre Court and Court No. 1. Centre Court, where the really big games get played at Wimbledon, is currently a bit of a no-go zone as it's getting a roof added, so the match was in Court No. 1, which seats about 11,000 people and is relatively new. It was very hot in the sun, so I quickly realized that by crouching down a bit I could hide in Mark's shade, which was a bit of a life saver!

I didn't really know what to expect, not being a person who really watches professional tennis, and I must say it was rather intriguing. For one thing, there's a lot of down time, a lot of botched serves and only so much action. Personally, my favorite component of the match were the Austrian fans, which formed a very small, but vocal and patriotically dressed group immediately behind the non-playing members of the Austrian team. The first time they had reason to cheer - and boy did they cheer - it amused the rest of the crowd to the point that there was a very audible laugh. However, those Austrian fans had the last laugh - winning the match in 3 straight sets. Alas. Not the best day for other Murray and headband - but overall a very interesting experience that I'm happy to have under my belt!