Comeback at SW19
Jerry Balsam
Two years ago, my report on three days at Wimbledon concluded:
Considering how this Wimbledon went, it was almost fitting that my final walk of the year to the Southfields Tube station was punctuated by a burst of heavy rain. If you’re going to get soaked, Wimbledon is the place to do it. Here’s hoping I get a chance to dodge London raindrops next July.
Come July 2025, I was not dodging raindrops in London or anywhere else, as I underwent surgery for a stress fracture of my left tibia. For one who had never heard of a Taylor Spatial Frame, it was an interesting way to learn about a device that would have looked at home in a medieval dungeon. I returned the ticket I had purchased from Wimbledon’s ballot returns website, received a full refund, and licked my wounds.
Back on my feet this year, I patrolled the ballot returns site (concerning which there is substantial discussion on Reddit, as there is for the queue) for weeks after it opened on March 21, the now traditional one hundred days before the start of the fortnight. Finally, on April 23, I found a pair of tickets for No.1 Court on the second Thursday of the tournament, i.e., for the men’s doubles semifinals. Having searched fruitlessly for tickets for over a month, I did not hold out for a singles session, taking what I could get.
I must give credit to The All England Lawn Tennis Club. In an era where bots and scalpers (or “touts,” in British lingo) scoop up tickets by the thousands and resell them at huge markups (as is certainly the case for the US Open, which I hope to attend later this year), Wimbledon has kept the bots at bay and sold tickets to the public at face prices. Whether through the ballot returns site or the queue, it is possible to obtain tickets, but they are scarce and you must work for them. It is a form of rationing, the alternative being charging market rates, as is the case with debenture tickets. As a pre-Covid headline in The Economist read in 2019, before the age of funflation, “To get a ticket to Wimbledon you must be rich, patient or lucky.” Never having been lucky with the ballot, other than indirectly in 2016, and unwilling to spend debenture ticket prices, I have relied on being patient.
Against that background, I boarded a London-bound flight on Sunday night, July 5. My Wimbledon did not get off to a roaring start, as thunderstorms in the New York area left us sitting on the tarmac for over three hours. By the time I arrived in London on Monday, most of the day was gone, and I abandoned hope of queuing for a ticket on Tuesday, for three reasons: (i) I wanted the time to settle in; (ii) the queue was reportedly very well-attended this year; and (iii) I didn’t want to spend three consecutive days baking in London’s heatwave. Instead, I visited Hyde Park, where the fountains in the Italian Gardens flowed as usual, while the same could not be said for the Diana Memorial Fountain. (As in past dispatches, italicized hyperlinks take you to my photographs.)
On Wednesday morning, July 8, I took the Tube to the queue. In past years, I have arranged to arrive by 5:00 a.m. – taking an Uber, because the Tube was not yet open for the day – and was fortunate to get tickets to No.1 Court. I didn’t think that was going to be possible this year, because of the popularity of the queue, so I arrived at a more civilized 9:25, getting queue card no. 3323. The first 500 people in the queue are able to get Centre Court tickets and the next 500 are eligible for No.1 Court. (This is not entirely correct, as individuals in the first 500 may opt out of Centre Court.) I believe that a 5:00 a.m. arrival would not have landed me in the first thousand on the queue, so I felt better about sleeping in.
A young woman who was organizing the queue told me that she had gone to school in the neighborhood with this year’s Wimbledon Cinderella, Arthur Féry. She assured me that I would be able to buy a grounds pass. The line began moving at 9:50, and I bought my grounds pass at 10:41, for the bargain price of £26. I then waited on another queue to sign up for the ticket resale, which proved, as expected, futile.
My first match of the day was on Court 17, a quad wheelchair contest between the top seed and three-time champion, Niels Vink, and a local player, Gregory Slade. I learned from Wikipedia that Quad is the newest division of wheelchair tennis, reserved for players who have substantial loss of function in at least one upper limb. Slade’s legs were bound together; Vink, sad to say, lost his legs as a result of a bacterial infection when he was a year old.
Seeing the wheelchairs used for tennis, one can understand how they avoid substantial damage to the grass courts. Aside from the two big wheels on either side of the chair, which touch the court at an angle, the wheels used for pivoting are small and unobtrusive.
In wheelchair matches, the server holds the second ball in the spokes of his wheelchair. For his part, Vink kept two balls in the spokes, perhaps to assure that he would not have to rotate the wheels much to grab a ball. The player receiving serve starts out well behind the baseline and rolls forward as the serve is coming in. As a result, it is necessary for the receiver to retreat to his starting position after a fault or – not uncommonly – after the server catches his toss. Of necessity, with the non-racquet hand occupied with holding a wheel, all backhands are one-handed. The players did not fuss over which ball to use for first serve, presumably because their confinement to wheelchairs makes it difficult to turn the serve into a weapon. The rules of wheelchair tennis allow players to return the ball after two bounces rather than one. This leniency was exercised less often than I would have guessed, but this makes sense when you think about it. The second bounce may be necessary when retrieving a drop shot or other short ball, but for a typical groundstroke the second bounce would occur well behind the player’s position.
It took Vink only 20 minutes to capture the first set at love. He reeled off the first eight games of the contest before Slade held serve and celebrated by raising his arms skyward. Serving for the match at 5-2, Vink was broken. In the ensuing game, Slade saved two match points at 0-40; on the third, Vink’s service return caught the line to close out a 6-0 6-3 victory in one hour. Vink then switched from a tennis wheelchair to an ordinary one. Vink went on to capture the title, defeating his Dutch countryman Sam Schröder in the final for his tenth major championship.
My next stop was No.2 Court, where I found a seat in the shade in front of the ESPN booth for a men’s doubles quarterfinal between Marcelo Arévalo/Mate Pavić and the defending champions, Julian Cash/Lloyd Glasspool. Arévalo wore tights (white, of course) and a sleeve on his right arm, leaving his left arm as his only exposed limb. All four players wore baseball caps, with Cash wearing his backward. On this hot day – the temperature topping out at 90 degrees on Wednesday and 93 on Thursday (or 32.2 and 33.9 Celsius, for those who are so inclined) – the ballkids wore caps reminiscent of the French Foreign Legion or Ivan Lendl in Australia, with earflaps to protect against the sun. (The technical term appears to be a Havelock.)
This match, and the men’s doubles semifinals I was to see on Thursday, featured the modern style of play. In the old days, doubles players split the court lengthwise, with each player responsible for his side. There were exceptions, to be sure, such as when the player closest to the net crossed over for a poach or when a lob could be retrieved more readily by the player on the other half of the court. The server, moreover, invariably followed his serve to net.
More recently, serve-and-volley has become nearly extinct in singles, and it has become less common in doubles. The players I saw in men’s doubles this year typically did play serve-and-volley, but in a modified form. Now, the net man is positioned very close to the net, and most of the time somewhere in the middle of the court, crouching to the ground as the serve whizzes above his head. Sometimes the net man poaches, sometimes he stays put, sometimes he covers the line. The server advances toward the net, but at a somewhat deliberate pace, giving him a chance to race behind his partner to cover a lob return. Effectively, the players on the serving team divide the court diagonally, and you see situations where all four players are in the center of the court. The modern configuration is designed, as I understand it, to deprive the returner of an obviously safe target. If he goes crosscourt and the return is anything short of perfect, the net man may poach successfully. If he goes down the line, the net man may stay home and have an easy putaway volley. Perhaps the most effective return is a lob over the net man. He is so close to the net that he has no chance of getting to a good lob, and the server is in a difficult position to cover for his partner. The issue is that it is quite difficult to hit an effective lob off a serve traveling at 120 mph.
Returning to our match on No.2 Court, Arévalo and Pavić nabbed the opening set, 6-2, breaking Cash in the fifth game and Galloway in the seventh. The second set was much closer, with no break points for either team. In the tiebreak, Cash dropped his first two service points on a double fault and a forehand half-volley that found the net. Arévalo and Pavić cruised from there, closing out the match and dethroning the 2025 champions, 6-2 7-6(2).
An astute reader may wonder how I found a seat on No.2 Court when grounds passes are not accepted there. I was not astute enough to realize that when I traipsed into the stands, unimpeded by Wimbledon personnel, confusing No.2 Court (which has reserved seats only) with No.3 Court (which has reserved and general admission seats). I was not dislodged from my unauthorized seat in the shade until late in the match, when the ticketholder arrived, and I thereupon took one of many empty seats until the match had ended.
My last match of the day was a women’s doubles quarterfinal between the ninth-seeded team of Ellen Perez/Demi Schuurs and the 13th-seeded Shuko Aoyama/En-Shuo Liang, where I legitimately found a seat on No.3 Court. When I arrived, the latter team led 2-1, up a break of serve.
Aoyama, 38 years old and barely five feet tall, hits with two hands on both wings. When serving, she has a very deliberate motion and struggles to get any zip on the ball. Liang has a more powerful serve. Schuurs is a natural net-rusher, even with her eyes closed. Perez, a lefthander, seemed the least consistent player on the court, mixing impressive winners with incomprehensible errors.
In the first game I saw, Aoyama was broken for 2-2. With Schuurs serving at 3-3, she chased a high-bouncing ball in the corner. Nearing the back wall, she tripped over a ballgirl and fell hard to the ground. While she seemed to be shaken up badly, she continued playing after receiving treatment from a physio and did not seem to be impaired as the match continued.
The teams held serve to 4-4. Perez dug a hole for herself with two double faults at 15-15. She got back to deuce, but a third double fault gave the advantage to the receivers. On this break point, Liang’s short return befuddled the serving team: Schuurs did not go for it, and Perez could not move forward fast enough to handle it. With that break of serve in hand, Liang served out the first set, 6-4.
Perez and Schuurs drew first blood in the second set, breaking Aoyama at love in the fourth game. Aoyama and Liang then grabbed eight consecutive points, breaking Schuurs at love and holding at love. With Schuurs serving at 4-4 15-30, Perez bricked a forehand volley and Schuurs netted a backhand for the decisive break. Liang served out the match at love to seal a 6-4 6-4 victory, the final point coming when Aoyama’s reflex forehand volley floated onto the baseline for a winner.
Sweltering in the heat, I passed up an invitational mixed doubles match and queued for the American Express lounge, which proved to be nothing special. There were no free drinks, not even water, and the air conditioning was unimpressive. I was able to get a glimpse of Vijay Amritraj, recharge my phone, and take a complimentary fan as a souvenir for my daughter. I could not leave the grounds right away, however, as the singles matches on both Centre Court and No.1 Court had just let out, leading officials to hold us in a queue before we could hit Wimbledon Park Road. Along the way, I saw a few signs, including this one, protesting the planned expansion of Wimbledon’s grounds.
On Thursday, July 9, I returned to Wimbledon with a No.1 Court ticket in hand – well, in phone, as almost everything is digital these days. (When you queue successfully, however, you get a paper ticket, which is a nice keepsake for a Baby Boomer.) I was on the grounds before the 11:00 a.m. start of play on the field courts, but there was no place in the shade to watch the matches. I hid out underneath the pergola next to Court 7, where, in a victory for the forces of decency, Polina Skliar of Ukraine, age 15, defeated Mariia Makarova of Russia in a girls’ singles quarterfinal. (The ultimate champion, however, was another Russian, Anna Pushkareva.)
My first match of the day, beginning at 1:00 p.m., was a men’s doubles semifinal between Marcelo Arévalo and Mate Pavić, whom I’d seen on Wednesday, and Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz, whom I’ve seen on a few occasions at Wimbledon and the US Open. Krawietz was the only player to eschew a cap. A couple of years ago, I observed that Puetz was relatable, with his bald head and taped-up knee. This year, his knee was liberated, but his left shin was taped up at a height that seemed similar to where my tibia was fractured last year. We got a glimpse of Puetz’s gleaming skull only after the match had ended.
My seat was blessedly in the shade, behind the baseline to the chair umpire’s right. After successfully queuing in past years, I have sat in the first few rows of No.1 Court along the sideline, near the baseline to the umpire’s right. The occupants of those seats, along with most of those sitting on either side of the court, spent most of this day fanning themselves incessantly in the heat. I would not say that it was comfortable sitting in the shade, but it was surely far less uncomfortable.
There were no breaks of serve in the first set, with Pavić – he of the distinctive service motion, wherein he takes a giant step to his left as he tosses the ball – saving one break point and Krawietz two. The tiebreak did not follow the script of routine service holds. Arévalo and Pavić jumped to a 4-0 lead, grabbing one mini-break on Pavić’s lob return off Krawietz’s serve and a second on Puetz’s double fault.
Krawietz and Puetz were not – to use my daughter’s terminology, appropriate for the scorching day – cooked. They promptly reeled off six consecutive points, with mini-breaks occurring when Arévalo poached unsuccessfully, deflecting the ball wide, and when he and Pavić each offered up a double fault. On the first set point, Puetz was unable to return serve. On the second, this time with Puetz serving, Arévalo scrambled to retrieve a short volley and keep the point alive, leading to Puetz hitting a backhand wide.
At 6-6, Krawietz earned his team a third set point with a forehand volley off a poach. An Arévalo backhand volley tied the score, 7-7. Puetz just missed a backhand return to give Arévalo and Pavić their first set point at 8-7. With Krawietz serving, Arévalo’s backhand return down the line went just long, making it 8-8. Krawietz then hit a second serve at 117 mph, which Pavić returned with an inside-out forehand for a winner, giving his team a second set point at 9-8. Now the serve went to Arévalo, and Puetz concluded a long rally with a forehand that flew long, giving the set to Arévalo and Pavić, 7-6(8).
Arévalo and Pavić pulled away in the second set. They broke Krawietz’s serve from 30-30 in the sixth game, with a hard return by Pavić handcuffing Puetz at the net, followed by Arévalo hitting a backhand return down the line for a winner. In the eighth game, with Puetz serving at 30-30, Arévalo, finding himself out of position at the net, reached back for a forehand volley winner to set up match point. The end was anticlimactic, with a Puetz double fault making for a 7-6(8) 6-2 final.
The second semifinal was played between the top seeds, Harri Heliövaara and Henry Patten, and the pickup team of Thanasi Kokkinakis and Aleksandar Kovacevic. It tells you something about the role of doubles in contemporary tennis that Kovacevic was the only player among the eight men’s semifinalists who has yet to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. Patten and Kokkinakis braved the sun without headgear. Patten, in common with his fellow lefthander Pavić, played the deuce court when receiving, the theory being that it is useful to have two forehands in the middle of the court.
Surprisingly to me, Kovacevic, listed at 6 feet tall and one of the few one-handers left in the game, was the first to serve for his team, instead of the 6’4” Kokkinakis, who won the Australian Open men’s doubles in 2022. It was no longer surprising once I saw how they served. Kokkinakis does not have a shabby serve, to be sure, but Kovacevic served significantly harder, regularly topping 130 mph. Of course, it’s not all about speed: Heliövaara had frequent success in the deuce court with a slice serve wide to Kovacevic’s forehand.
There were no breaks of serve in the first set. In the tiebreak, Heliövaara and Patten took leads of 3-0 (with two mini-breaks) and 5-1. Patten had experienced some problems on serve earlier in the set, but when he stepped to the line at 5-2 in the tiebreak, he struck two aces to close out the set.
In the second set, Heliövaara saved a break point in the fourth game. Patten, serving at 4-5, fell behind by 30-40 and ad out, saving both set points with service winners. Once again, the teams went to a tiebreak. With Patten serving at 5-5, his team got to match point when Heliövaara put away a forehand volley. Kovacevic saved one match point with a 131 mph ace and gave his team set point with another 131 mph serve that Patten could not return. Heliövaara saved set point when Kovacevic missed a backhand volley in a rally that followed a second serve. His team reached match point at 8-7 when he found the corner, and an ace, on his patented 105 mph slice serve. Kokkinakis followed with a 94 mph second serve on the line that Heliövaara could not handle, making the score 8-8. Kokkinakis served wide in the deuce court at 117 mph, and Patten timed his left-handed backhand return perfectly, nailing it crosscourt for a winner and a fourth match point. Patten then closed out the match with a second serve that was too much for Kokkinakis, making the final score 7-6(2) 7-6(8).
Respecting the sun and the heat, I called it a day, skipping a men’s wheelchair doubles semifinal. For those who were wondering, Heliövaara and Patten went on to win their second Wimbledon title, defeating Arévalo and Pavić, 7-6(4) 7-6(3). Arévalo did not go home empty-handed, picking up the mixed doubles title with Jelena Ostapenko, whose exploits, for good and ill, have been chronicled in these pages.
Thus ended my 2026 Wimbledon. Two years after I got soaked on the way out – and one year after I underwent orthopedic surgery – I headed back to Southfields station toward the end of a rare fortnight in which Wimbledon experienced no rain at all. It was a privilege to return to the serenity of the All England Club and its manicured grass courts before the in-your-face experience of summer’s end in Flushing Meadow. I, for one, hope Wimbledon will be able to pull off its expansion, especially if it becomes easier to obtain tickets and navigate the grounds. I feel confident that the AELTC will do the job right, in its understated way.
Finally, having enjoyed the doubles, I hope the ATP stops short of its plans to cut back on the discipline even further. The spoilsports at the ATP seem to partake of the ideology of the fictional character Allston C. Wheat in The McLandress Dimension, written by John Kenneth Galbraith under the pseudonym Mark Epernay. The politically conservative Wheat was a tennis player, but he argued that doubles was dangerous because “the individual is lost in the partnership,” a form of “collectivist ideology.” What Mr. Wheat would have made of Wimbledon spectators pulling out their phones to watch the World Cup we can only speculate.