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Net Gains: Graveyard of champions goes way of all flesh but it will be rebuilt

Veronica Lee
Sunday 05 July 2009 00:00 BST
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As if the unveiling of a £100 million roof and the opening of a new outside court wasn't enough work for the All England Club, bulldozers will be here again first thing tomorrow. They will raze the beloved old Court 2, which was renumbered as No 3 this year after a new No 2 was opened at the south end of the grounds. The old No 2 court, nicknamed "graveyard of champions" because so many seeds lost on it, will be demolished and rebuilt for 2011 and will have 2,000 seats. The delay is unrelated to builders, by the way. It takes a year for a new court to bed in.

Where the money wasn't

You'll be delighted to know that one group of people weren't unhappy about Andy Murray's semi-final defeat – the bookies. Apparently more than £1m, a record on one player at Wimbledon – was bet on the Scot to take Rafael Nadal's title and the bookmakers would have taken a major soaking had he won today's men's singles final. The clever punters, though, were those who lumped on a newly fit Andy Roddick on odds of 25-1 before the championships began.

Fishing for compliments

Spotted at the 'Food Court' underneath Court No 1: four members of the Williams sisters' entourage – which appears to get bigger each year – tucking into fish and chips with gusto. "It's delicious," they chorused. "Someone should open a franchise in the States. But don't forget the strawberries and cream as dessert." I see a business opportunity...

Statue shifted

What a pity that the All England Club have moved their statue of Fred Perry. Unveiled in 1984, it quickly became a meeting point (indeed was marked on official maps as such), but before these championships it was moved to a quiet corner of the grounds where, one disappointed AELTC member told me: "People just walk straight past it, not realising it's there – and this in the centenary year of his birth. Rather bad form, I'd say."

Brits do their bit

While the rest of us have been glued to the finals this weekend, two British stars have been doing their bit to help the next generation discover the joys of tennis. Anne Keothavong was hitting with competitors in the mini-tennis tournament at the London Youth Games in Hackney yesterday – she and her brother James, who is now an umpire on the professional circuit, competed in the event as local kids 10 years ago – while today Elena Baltacha is running a coaching clinic at the LTA Performance Centre in Cambridge.

Pronounced weakness

Another year, another opportunity missed for BBC presenters to learn how to pronounce the semi-finalist Elena Dementieva's surname. For the record, John Inverdale and Tracy Austin, it's DE-MENT-YE-VUH, and not the one where it sounds as if she suffers from Alzheimer's.

The idle rich

They do things differently in the Royal Box on Centre Court. When a ball drifted into it during a match last week, a beautifully coiffeured guest in there rather grandly called over a uniformed steward, pointed to where it was, at her feet, and instructed him to throw it back to the ballboy.

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