Wimbledon: there's more to it than just Centre Court

(DAVID ASHDOWN)

The secret of comedy, the comedian Arnold Brown once observed, is timing. If he turns up at a theatre tonight and the audience doesn't get there until a week on Tuesday, that's bad timing. Well, the secret of watching tennis at Wimbledon also lies in the timing. The spectating experience here is akin to that at one of the British summer's other great sporting events, golf's Open Championship, loud groans and tumultuous cheers from afar constantly making many customers wonder whether the main excitement is unfolding elsewhere.

For those without show court tickets, this frustration intensifies. Around mid-afternoon yesterday there were several huge explosions from Centre Court as Maria Sharapova fought, and failed, to stay in the championship. And that was just Sharapova.

Ground tickets are available for those who wait patiently in the fabled Wimbledon queue every day (getting strawberry-shaped badges for their pains), but for the hardcore queuers, the overnight campers and so on, there are 500 daily tickets for Centre Court on offer, and a further 500 for Court One.

Yet there are still rewards aplenty for the fans with ground tickets and even while as the Sharapova drama reached fever-pitch, Hebe Dickins and Bryce Birkhead had their own little drama in the form of some angry looks from the spectators around them, as they loudly encouraged Nicolas Devilder from France and his Belgian partner Christophe Rochus, because one of the pair (they weren't sure which) was very good-looking. That was before they realised that the team on the other side of the net, Jamie Delgado and Jonathan Marray, were British. Patriotically, if half-heartedly, the girls switched their allegiance. Devilder, or it may have been Rochus, soldiered on without his young English roses in support. Perhaps that is why he, or his partner, retired injured with the match not so evenly poised at 1-6, 1-4.

The girls had travelled separately to get to Wimbledon, Hebe from Herefordshire and Bryce from Suffolk, meeting at Paddington station and enduring the crush of the District Line to Southfields. ("It was sweaty and horrible," reported Hebe.) Both girls enjoyed the 15-minute walk from the Tube station. Not once were they invited to show ID by the stall-holders dishing out free shots of beer.

Even within the All England Club, the tennis sometimes seems like a sideshow. The girls went to the Wimbledon shop where Bryce bought the cheapest item she could find, a pair of sweatbands costing £5. Then they had lunch on Murray Mount, formerly known as Henman Hill but, perhaps fortunately, yet to acquire its alliterative tradition back when your correspondent was 16 years old and Mark Cox was British number one.

Whatever it is called, the girls enjoyed their lunch there in the glorious sunshine. Hebe, worried that the All-England Club prices might be prohibitive, ate a pasty bought at Paddington. Had they thrown in their lot with the official food court, they might have had falafel and mint yoghurt wraps (£4) or roasted vegetable with rocket pesto panini (£4.80). Later, they bumped into a friend of Hebe's parents who (somewhat cavalierly given their tender age) bought them each a £6.30 glass of Pimm's.

But what of the tennis? Having tried to sneak into Court Two under the noses of three security guards, who sniffed out their ticketless status instantly, the girls roamed the outside courts until early evening, listening to the grunting that increasingly bedevils the women's game in particular. "We heard one who made a noise like a donkey," said Bryce. "At least the men sound like they have to grunt. The women seem to want to outdo each other."

Both admitting that they were looking for tips to improve their own games. "But all I learnt, basically, is how terrible I am," concluded Hebe. "Maybe I need to learn to grunt."