Tom O’Neill and Roz McArdle stood in Wimbledon’s famous ticketing line with little hope of entering the grounds. It was 5.30pm Wednesday, 4,000 people were ahead of them and a steward told them it was ‘tremendously unlikely’ they would get inside.
But she and hundreds of others clung to the tiniest glimmer of hope of seeing at least a game in the citadel of tennis, which steadfastly moved along the serpentine line.
“We might as well try,” McArdle said. “We left work around 4pm and got here around 5pm. If we don’t make it, maybe we’ll come back on Friday.”
They did what humans have been doing for more than a century: they queued up through an adjacent golf course and down Church Road to a ticket office where everyone, some of whom have been in line for over 24 hours, can buy a ticket, only for this day, to the most famous tennis tournament in the world.
“It’s definitely worth it,” said Shreyas Dharmadhikari, a defender from Jabalpur in central India. “It’s a pilgrimage made for the love of tennis, for the love of Wimbledon.”
With a seating capacity of around 42,000, Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance via a public voting system and awards some tickets to tennis clubs and people living close to the All England Club, as well as other select channels. It’s among the hardest-to-get tickets in esports, but the tournament offers audiences thousands of daily tickets if they’re willing to wait hours for one.
The line is one of the longest, old-fashioned checkout lines in the world, the sports equivalent of the infamous Studio 54 line but much older.
On Wednesday, Dharmadhikari brought his son Arjun, who was wearing a sticker that the stewards distributed that read, “I stood in line in the rain.” They were given hand cards numbered 11,466 and 11,477, waited five and a half hours to get in, and were delighted to see several matches and eat strawberries with cream.
But on Monday, some people waited almost twice as long to queue amid intermittent persistent rain showers on a disastrous opening day. Tournament organizers attributed the delays, which slowed the line to a crawl, to increased security searches amid the looming climate protests.
The threat became a reality on Wednesday when two protesters ran onto Court No. 18 and knocked over a box of orange confetti. The protesters were led away fairly quickly and play resumed – albeit only after another rain delay in a tournament plagued by them. After weeks of virtually no rainfall in London, intermittent rain over the first three days of the tournament caused chaos in the schedule and a soggy queue.
But even without special circumstances, the queue can be a long (sometimes over a mile), tiring, adventurous, wet, fun and quintessentially British institution.
Two students, Simon, 10, and his brother Stefano, 8, quietly read comics while waiting on Wednesday, hoping to see their favorite player, 21-year-old Italian Jannik Sinner, who will face Argentina’s Diego Schwartzman in straight sets defeated at Court #1.
“We waited maybe two hours,” Simon said, and his brother asked, “Do you think we can make it?”
About an hour later, a steward told a group somewhere in the middle of the line that 1,600 people were ahead of them and that he had been told by a ticket manager that only 250 tickets would be released. The group let out gasps of disbelief and disappointment, but no one left immediately.
“How you receive this information is entirely up to you,” said the administrator, who did everything except order everyone to go home.
It would not have been easy for Danielle Payten and her husband David Payten, who would have flown from Sydney, Australia with their three children. They took no risk of being left out of the daily queue by doing what hundreds are doing daily. They stayed in tents.
The tented area, where spectators sleep to ensure they get a good spot in line the next day, is the more festive part of the queue: this is where football is played, cards are played, cricket is played or read, and cocktails are sipped. The sun broke out on Wednesday afternoon, prompting young men in line to remove their shirts for an impromptu sunbath.
“It’s like a carnival atmosphere,” said one steward, who asked not to be named because he is not allowed to speak to reporters.
The Paytens arrived at 3:30pm and met some people from the neighboring tents, one of whom had a dog. They chatted, ate and drank as they prepared for a game of cricket on a flat patch of grass later that evening. Danielle’s brother, Chris Kearsley, who lives in London, arrived early to set up three tents for them (only two people per tent can get tickets). His daughter, Eliza Kearsley, lives a 15-minute walk from the same mystical place her relatives traveled 10,000 miles to.
She only stopped by to see her relatives, as neither she nor her father planned to camp and attend the games the next day.
“If I had stayed the night I would have been too drunk to go in,” joked Chris Kearsley.
But with only about 200 people in front of their group, the Australian cousins were all but guaranteed entry into Thursday’s games.
“It’s worth it,” said David Payten. “It’s an adventure.”
A traveler from Japan who planned to stay for most of the two-week tournament brought a portable, solar-powered washing machine.
Maria Balhetchet, a professional violinist from Dorset in southern England, and Felix Bailey, her tennis-playing son, arrived at 12.30pm on Wednesday to prepare for Thursday’s action. They were given card #101, which meant there were only 100 people in front of them. Balhetchet camped out with her other son last year and although they secured third-row tickets to an explosive match between eventual men’s singles finalists Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas, the overall experience was grueling. Moisture seeped into the tent, she couldn’t sleep and vowed never to do it again.
But there she was on Wednesday.
“It’s like giving birth,” she said. “You go through it and say, ‘Never again,’ but then of course you want it.”
They were ready to wake up at 6am on Thursday (after waiting in line for almost 18 hours). Campers have 30 minutes to dismantle their tents and take them to daily storage, then line up and wait — wait — four more hours for the gates to open. Some people go back to the park after playing tennis, pick up their tents and stand in line again – hence the need for the washing machine.
Among those still hoping for entry on Wednesday was a group of teenage tennis players from the Time to Play Tennis Academy in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Their coach Doug Robinson said the group flew from Harare to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and then to London where they hoped to watch Wimbledon live and then play some games in England.
Late on Wednesday afternoon they were still far behind in the queue. The children sat on the floor talking and Robinson assessed the situation.
“It doesn’t look very good from here,” he said. “But it’s Wimbledon. You have to take the chance.”