Camping overnight at Wimbledon wasn’t on the itinerary. But you know what they say about desperate times…
We had a few days in London after a pilgrimage to northeast England, and hoped to attend The Wimbledon Championships, London’s annual tennis love affair with manicured grass courts, all-white apparel, and strawberries and cream. But it’s practically impossible to secure advance tickets. We whiffed during the annual ticket lottery months before the Grand Slam tournament, which usually begins in late June.
Tickets on the secondary market are tightly controlled, and those seats cost about as much as a used motorcycle. For the persistent, however, there exists a little-known path called the Queue. (Translation shortcut: Brits’ “queue for the loo” is what we Americans would call a line for the restroom.)
Our Queue experience of (barely) sleeping overnight last summer in a green field with thousands of strangers began with bleary eyes and sore backs, tucked inside an abandoned tent. It ended with us planted in prime stadium seats, dead tired but grinning and plotting how soon we could do it again.
The original plan was to rise early, say 5 a.m., roll out of bed from our London Airbnb, and board the Underground to stand in line for the roughly 1,500 ticketed seats (plus thousands of grounds passes) that Wimbledon sells at face value every morning, except the few final rounds. These last-minute tickets constitute one of the best deals in sports.
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The deeper I dove into online research on the Queue, the more I worried that a morning start would be too late to secure seats. So, we bolted about 8 p.m. the night before, packing a bottle of water, two plastic rain ponchos, a folding umbrella, a bag of trail mix, and two bath towels as ground cover. Not nearly enough.
We arrived at the Southfields Station on the Tube’s District Line about 9 p.m., wedged tightly with other tennis fans. By 9:20, we had navigated crowds along Wimbledon Park Road and arrived at the park’s green fields, where the Queue begins. Small tents sprouted everywhere.
Shortly after, a steward handed us a line ticket. The numbers read 1037 and 1038. According to our rapid calculations (later proved wrong), we would be among the first ticket recipients for No. 2 Court. This was based on assumptions that the first 500 would get Centre Court reserved tickets, the next 500 would be seated in No. 1 Court, and the last 500 seats would be for No. 2 Court. Everyone else would get grounds passes allowing general admission to outer courts, until they ran out.
Having secured our place in line, we began the search for some essentials. Namely, everything we had neglected to pack, like a tent. After we spread our white towels on the grass, a neighbor kindly suggested that some abandoned tents might be found adjoining the “left luggage” area. I unearthed a two-person one that appeared brand new, and pounded in stakes with our water bottle. Later, a neighbor brought a plastic hammer, and we jointly helped a new arrival set up his tent. I rented a portable power bank from a dispenser for about $15 to recharge dying phones.
We nodded off about 11:30 p.m., sleeping fitfully–a product of the hard ground, flashlights flitting past our tent, and the low rumble of neighbors’ conversations. Some appeared to have no sleeping plans. I awakened at 4:30 a.m. to a Babel of voices in various languages, one question pushing all other thoughts aside:`
“Who are these people, and don’t they ever sleep?”
At 5:03 a.m., stewards’ voices rang out: “Good morning, everybody up, rise and shine!”
In rapid succession, we:
– Scored coffee and pastries from one of the food carts
– Donned our ponchos against a steady drizzle
– Realized too late that we should have packed toothbrushes
– Folded our tent and returned it to the orphan pile for the next lucky user
Most campers, having actually planned their foray, stored tents and bags in left luggage. As lines formed–all finely orchestrated by stewards–we collected more intel from experienced campers. One woman, in her 30th year of queueing, said our math for calculating probable seat location was all wrong.
She explained that many ahead of us had secured numbers with plans to wait for the following day. Fixated on seeing one particular player, they were willing to camp for two nights just to ensure a seat.
Good news for us–we moved that much closer to No. 1 Court instead of No. 2. Besides showcasing more top-ranked players, No. 1 and its retractable roof would guarantee no rain delays.
As we slowly advanced toward ticketing, stewards checked and rechecked our line tickets and gave us wristbands. Finally, at 9:20 a.m.–exactly 12 hours after arriving–we clutched actual tickets in hand. No. 1 Court, Row A, seats 24 and 25. Cost per seat was just over $151–a fraction of the $3,000 seats I’d found online.
Row A…that sounded promising. After a detour to watch young Brazilian star Joao Fonseca on another court, we arrived at No. 1 Court. We were shocked to discover that our seats waited in the very front row, center court, with nothing between the players and us except news photographers and a few feet of trimmed grass.
Seated next to us was a new acquaintance who had also braved the Queue the night before. Every year, he camps for Wimbledon tickets at least three times, with varying results. His assessment mirrored ours.
“Today,” he said, “we got very lucky.”