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Japanese version

27^th June, Tuesday
Wimbledon

By Audrey

7:10am It’s a bright and sunny morning. The air is fresh and it looks like a promising day for tennis. I exit from Southfields tube station, which is one of the nearest stations to Wimbledon. More travel details are available from the Wimbledon website. I just follow the crowd ahead who know where they are going. There’s a shuttle service to Wimbledon but I decide to walk. The queue outside Wimbledon is already tremendously long, winding from the road to an open field. The line must be more almost 2km in length and people keep pouring in. It’s unbelievable. I join my friends in the queue who were there earlier. Phew! Thank goodness they’re early riser. The line starts to move slowly.

8:30am The line moves forward at greater speed ‘cos up ahead, the overnight barrier to the Wimbledon entrance is removed. Along the way, enterprising people have set up stalls selling unofficial (but cheaper and nicer) Wimbledon souvenirs like t-shirts, caps etc. Sponsors come by to hand out free cakes and newspapers. Wimbledon staff hand out souvenir stickers and fans. Great fun to queue in the lines ‘cos people have great camaraderie. Some experienced people have brought small foldable stools and start to play cards. Some cars pass by with what I suspect are some players, although I don’t recognise them

9:30am I think the ticket booths are open ‘cos we are moving forward at a faster pace. I realise how wrong I was about the length of the queue ahead of me when I see how far we have to walk to Wimbledon. Triple my previous estimate. I still don’t see the stadium.

9:45am Okay, I see the stadium. First we have to go over the bridge. As I am about to step onto it. The official stops my friends and me. Oh no! Don’t tell me that’s the quota of people they’re letting in today! But no. They just want to prevent too many people going onto the bridge for safety reasons.

10:00am I’m in Wimbledon! What a place! It’s a huge tennis village and the place is packed. I paid £12 for a day pass which allows me entry into courts 3-19 and standing room for Court 2. First stop, the practice courts to see whom we can spot. We manage to get a good viewing spot. Oh my goodness! It’s Michael and Carl! What good luck! I can’t stop gushing and my friends have to calm me down. I fumble to get my camera and get a few good shots of him. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and facing us while Carl feeds in the balls. Michael practises the various shots, serves, volleys, baseline shots etc. His trainer, Ken Matsuda, helps to pick up the stray balls. In the next court is Patrick Rafter who has his back to the crowd. He’s looking really good tennis-wise too. I never realised he was so tall.

11:40am My friends and I arrive early at Court 4 but not early enough ‘cos there’s a hoard of people there already to watch Michael play. I get to overhear a lot of conversations about Michael. Of course there are many Asians in the crowd to support him but what was surprising was this hard-core British guy behind me that was so supportive of Michael. Later, throughout the whole match, he kept making witty jibes at the other guy and he was entertaining all of us.

12:00 noon Michael and his opponent arrive. They have to squeeze through the crowd to get onto the court. His parents are already seated in the bench just behind Michael’s chair. Carl comes along later carrying a bug tennis bag. He’s wearing a white blazer. The first thing he does is to adjust his chair so that it faces into the court. After the Seles stabbing incident the backs of the players chairs face the umpires chairs. Next he takes off his shoes and changes into a new one. I hear an American guy say the Michael always does that, i.e. wear one pair of shoes into court, but change into another pair to play. It looks to me that Michael is wearing two pairs of socks.

Overall, it was a pretty one-sided match. Michael played better and was moving well. After he won the first set, he seemed to play with even more confidence and was running down more shots. His opponent missed many easy shots and tried unsuccessfully to play drop shots. Michael almost always got to them. Or his opponent hit it into the net. But to the other guy’s credit, he played some beautiful shots with good placement. I notice that Michael came in to volley a lot in this match. I think of his recent success on grass and wonder to myself if he has suddenly grown to like a serve and volley game.

Other snippets of the match are:

Michael changed his shirt after every set. And he nibbled on one banana throughout the match.

There were twice that the umpire overruled the line judge and allowed Michael’s opponent the point. Michael questioned the decision, although I couldn’t hear the conversation. But later he accepted the decision. They weren’t crucial points anyhow.

Michael was about to serve when a gust of wind blew and he changed his mind and let the toss fall into the court while saying "sorry" out loud. He has a very distinctive voice.

Another time when he was about to serve, a stray ball dropped behind him. He turned around and scooped it onto his racket head. He asked to nearby ball boy about it, but no one seemed to know where he came from so he just lighted hit it over the wall behind him onto the next court. Then he turned back to the court, stretched out his hands, shrugged his shoulders, and opened his eyes wide in an expression of "I don’t know where that came from". And the umpire said something which I think was probably along the lines of ‘you shouldn’t have done that’ and Michael looked a little childishly apologetic. And the crowd loved it! It was so cute.

After Michael won, he sat down, looked to the sky and said "Thank you". I couldn’t hear him but I know he said that from the movement of his lips. His parents and Carl left first while he stayed behind to get sign autographs. By the time I reached him he was already leaving the court and so many people were still surrounding him. I managed to get close enough to him and got his autograph! I was really lucky ‘cos he had already stepped into the players’ area and he still stopped to sign this other kid’s and mine. It was so dramatic ‘cos I though he was going in already and I was going to miss my chance. For this I am really grateful and impressed. And when I said thank you, he even nodded in reply, while still busy signing autographs for others. What a nice guy! In contrast, I saw a lot of other famous players walking around and they don’t seem so approachable. As usual, he signed "Jesus loves you. Michael Chang"

Just thought it worth mentioning that John McEnroe who is commentating for the BBC has said at least twice about maybe including Michael Chang in the Davis Cup team. The first time he said something like "maybe Michael Chang, if he will talk to me" And the second time he was responding to news about Pete Sampras going to the hospital to get his ankle scanned and said that he may have to consider others such as Gambill and Michael Chang.

I heard from my friend that Mary Pierce said in an interview after winning the French Open that he has found God in her life and has been talking to Michael about it. Does anyone know anything about this? I did notice that she wore a rosary around her neck when she was playing in the final and that she said a prayer after she won.

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