Wimbledon (July 27)

Today Kenzie, Mandie and I went to see Wimbledon. It was so exciting, but it made me miss my family. I am mad that we missed the tournament by just a few days when we came out here. That would have been a once in a lifetime opportunity but oh well. We went on a tour of the grounds and we learned a lot of cool things. It was started in 1921 but finished in 1922. We learned that the grass is always 8 mm long. We also learned that they have a huge fox problem. I guess the foxes come in and r uin the courts so to prevent that from happening they have 24 hour guards watching over the courts. We went to see the press room where all of the athletes go for interviews after matches. An interesting fact about this is that the journalists request who they want to interview and if the athletes don’t show up they can be fined. This is not a Wimbledon rule but rather a rule that applies at every major tournament. For example, when one athlete didn’t show up to the French Open he got fined $40,000. That was a big mistake.
The Wimbledon tennis club has about 100 honorary members and about 400 full time life members. However there are never more than 500 members at anytime. This is a very prestigious club obviously and to be invited to join you must be invited by one member, seconded by another, and then supported by three more members. The easiest way however is to win the championship… no big deal right? Money does not play an important role in the membership which I thought was cool. We learned that it only costs about 100 pounds a year. So basically you could be the richest person in the world and still not be able to be a member of this tennis club.
Also, at Wimbledon there is no advertising allowed. In fact they have what is called “suppliers” which are companies that actually pay the tennis club to be a supplier. A few well known suppliers are Rolex and Evian to name a few. They supply the tennis club with product and pay them 25 million pounds!! But I guess it is worth it.
There are about 50,000 seats in the stadiums. We were able to walk all around them and we were even able to go down to center court. While we were in there they opened the roof up for us it was pretty neat. The grass was being reseeded so it was covered. We also walked into the area that the players enter and then to the area where (according to tradition) go with their families to have tea and strawberries and cream. Basically after today I decided that Roger Federer doesn’t know it yet but I will be his future (next) wife. It was a great experience!!