Wimbledon `97: Shroud covers the court of dreams

Richard Edmondson takes a fond last look at the now dismantled old No 1

It may have been a painful exercise to occupy the new Court No1 on Thursday as our boys baled out tamely, but that was nothing compared with seeing the damaged skeleton of the original arena yesterday.

What remains behind high doors at the All England Club is a pit where once there was a temple to the highest drama of Wimbledon. A wounding reminder of great days past comes in the waves of applause from the Centre Court as you survey the cabins, water tanks and building material lying in such haphazard order it appears they have been thrown to their location by floodwater. There remain vestiges of times past: the scoreboard operator's hut, teak benches that have seen some services, and the open west terrace still on its way to the stars.

There is also a clear view over to the new No1, the so-called younger brother of the Centre Court, and the mourning of a passing can largely be erased by the sight of its functional replacement. They are bonded by the decoration of a simple purple and dark green drape. The one at the old court lies like a memorial shroud over the old ramparts, while the other has the christening sense of a sheet at the car showroom.

The patina of grass has long been removed from the old surface and transplanted at Eastbourne. We will have to wait until next summer to discover if the courts at the East Sussex resort start taking on the characteristics of the All-England Club. Meanwhile, it is not difficult to imagine the ghosts and spectres of those who once danced in the arena.

This was where Connors and Nastase, the Bradford & Bingley of tennis, having played doubles in bowler hats elsewhere, tried their luck with umbrellas in hand one rain-threatened afternoon. It was where Boris Becker surrendered a tennis contest but gained a following for the sort of sage words that struggle to get out of most sportsmen's mouths. "I lost a tennis match," he said after Australia's Peter Doohan had destroyed his prospects of winning a third consecutive championship in 1987. "It was not a war. Nobody died."

Memorable observations were made six years earlier by a New Yorker, whose style was not to charm officials to distraction. His mind was a field of battle just about every time he pulled on his headband, not least the time in 1981 when he opined towards an umpire: "You are the pits." John McEnroe added that umpire and referee were "two bumps on a log". Then the audience was told to dismiss itself. "I am so disgusting you shouldn't watch," McEnroe said. "Everybody leave."

McEnroe and Becker were among the parade of multiple champions at the launch of the new No 1, and though the lawn may only be 12 days old there is already enough for an appendix to the history book.

Those still consuming the petits fours and draining the cafetiere well into the afternoon have missed the sight of Tim Henman's successful arena baptism against Daniel Nestor and the sight of Greg Rusedski, formerly of Canada but now with the documents of Blighty, displaying his fridge showroom of a smile to the quarter-finals. While the old place was a scrapyard on Thursday its successor became the new graveyard as both Britons then departed the championships.

The ease of cultivation of the younger brother's surface means the auditorium may become even more popular with the players than the Centre Court. It will be a far more protracted struggle, however, to capture the favour of those who still transport the memory of the original which lies on a slab in SW19.