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    Wimbledon: Andy Murray, Battling Injuries and Age, Faces Final Call

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    He is the last British man to have won this very English tournament. He did it twice, along with grabbing two Olympic golds.“I guess I’ll just need to win Wimbledon to shut everyone up.” — Andy Murray to The Daily Telegraph in June 2004Mission accomplished, although it took nearly a decade for Murray to manage it. He had to scrap and scream through all sorts of tennis trouble before finally putting a halt to all the annual chatter about when a British man might finally win Wimbledon again.Now, at 37 and at the end of his career — win or lose (or forced to withdraw because of recent back surgery) — he is saying goodbye to a tournament he conquered not once, but twice. Three years elapsed between his first victory in 2013 and his second in 2016, when his proud country rewarded Murray with a knighthood. In that same year, he won his second Olympic gold.For more than 70 years, the hope that a British man would win Wimbledon had become a tradition in a country that still likes its tradition: a part of the landscape at the well-tended All England Club where Fred Perry had won the men’s singles in 1936, but had long gone without a British successor.Tim Henman was still the local focal point when Murray emerged in 2005. Henman had reached four singles semifinals by rushing the net, but had always fallen short, handling each setback with a firm handshake and a dignified demeanor.Murray — a scruffy shock-absorbing baseliner from Scotland — managed the pressure and the project quite differently: muttering, moaning and sometimes swearing between points. But above all, he embraced the challenge as he trundled about the grass with a heavy gait only to move with astonishing quickness once the ball was in play.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Wimbledon, Players Must Deal With the Challenge of Grass

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      Fewer and fewer events are held on that surface. It can be tricky, and injuries are common.For Debbie Jevans, a seat on Centre Court at Wimbledon requires no more than a left turn out of her office, then a right turn past the trophies honoring past champions. A few short steps further, the same steps taken by the competitors on finals day, and Jevans finds herself on hallowed grass.“Centre Court is such a special place,” said Jevans, the first female chair of the All England Club, by video call last month. “The court is pristine, the flowers look amazing, the overviews of St. Mary’s Church in the background. I feel an enormous sense of pride and thanks to the hundreds of people who have got us to this point.”Seeing the elegance and lush lawns on opening day at Wimbledon is, for players and fans, like stepping back in time. One of the biggest reasons is because professional play on grass is as elusive as a Wimbledon title itself.Wimbledon groundskeepers work most of the year to maintain the rye grass courts, which allows the ground underneath to remain dry and firm.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesIga Swiatek has played 23 WTA grass-court singles matches out of almost 400 total in her career. Swiatek, the world No. 1, has not advanced beyond the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.Jannik Sinner, the newly named world No. 1 in men’s tennis, enters Wimbledon having played just one ATP grass-court tournament this year — which he won over Hubert Hurkacz in Halle, Germany, on June 23 — and only nine in his career. One of those matches was a five-set Wimbledon quarterfinal loss to Novak Djokovic in 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Strawberry Fields of Wimbledon

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      A team of workers has been racing to pick, pack and transport the more than two million strawberries that are expected to be served over the course of the tournament.It was midmorning and the sun was still rising across the English countryside, but Shakhboz Yakhshiboev had been awake since the early hours. Against the backdrop of first light, Yakhshiboev had been making his way through one of the many 50-yard-long polytunnels that were his assignment for these two weeks.His hands appeared to blur as they ran across strawberry after strawberry, their plants all placed at shoulder height. Yakhshiboev’s fingertips squeezed and his eyes scanned each berry. Split-second judgments were required: Too large or too small? Ripe or not yet? Is the color just right?To pick or not to pick?Yakhshiboev, 30, a seasonal fruit picker from Uzbekistan, is part of a 32-person team that, for the duration of Wimbledon, has been the first link in a chain that brings fresh, British strawberries from Hugh Lowe Farms in Mereworth, Kent, to be eaten at the two-week Grand Slam tournament held roughly 30 miles away.A serving of strawberries and cream has become as synonymous with Wimbledon as a Honey Deuce cocktail at the U.S. Open in New York or a pimento cheese sandwich at the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. More

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      Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and the Power of Vulnerability

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      Alcaraz and Medvedev rarely shy away from discussing their frailties, reflecting a shift in tennis culture. Now, they’ll face off in a Wimbledon semifinal.Carlos Alcaraz is nearly always a killer on the court, suffocating opponents with relentless aggressiveness.He did it once more on Wednesday, beating his childhood rival, Holger Rune of Denmark, in straight sets to land a spot in a Wimbledon semifinal for the first time. Alcaraz brims with confidence and never hesitates to answer when asked about his goal.“To win the tournament,” he said more than a week ago.So it always comes as a surprise when, sometimes in the next sentence, Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish star, reveals one of his insecurities. Perhaps it’s his lack of experience on grass courts, or his fear of Wimbledon’s hallowed Centre Court, or even the stress-induced panic that, combined with exhaustion, caused his entire body to cramp during the French Open semifinal last month against Novak Djokovic.“I was really, really nervous,” he said of his emotions before his 7-6(3), 6-4, 6-4 defeat of Rune.So maybe it’s fitting then that his opponent Friday will be Daniil Medvedev, another player who, though he is third in the world and has been ranked No. 1, has no problem seeing himself as the goof who has crashed the party at the top of elite tennis.For a long while in his five-set quarterfinal against the American Chris Eubanks, the suddenly hot, sixth-year overnight sensation, things were not going well for Medvedev. At one moment, a ball kid bounced a ball over to him. He dropped it onto his foot, and the ball rolled away.“Nice job,” he said to himself out loud, as he fetched it.Such is the essence of Medvedev, who won the match.“When I go on the court, I always try to be myself,” Medvedev, a 27-year-old Russian, said early in the tournament. “If you tell the truth, it’s easier.”Before this year, Daniil Medvedev’s best result at Wimbledon was a fourth-round appearance in 2021. He beat Alcaraz on his way there.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTennis and sports psychology have come a long way. Not so long ago, the idea of admitting to nerves or weakness was seen as a surefire recipe for defeat. In recent years, sports psychologists and wiser veterans have been encouraging their clients and protégés to understand the value of embracing their frailties.“So many of us, and especially athletes, wear this mask, like it’s a piece of armor,” said Ben Crowe, who spent years working with the former world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty, who retired last year at 25. “We think it makes us safe. But we need vulnerability.”Billie Jean King, one of tennis’s greats and a trailblazer for equal rights, chimed in on the subject just before Wimbledon, discussing how concerned she had become over watching so many players struggle with their mental health because they try to achieve the impossible.“Boys are taught they always have to act brave, and girls are taught they are supposed to be perfect,” King said at a ceremony earlier this month celebrating the 50th anniversary of the WTA Tour’s founding. “Well, boys can’t always be courageous, and no one can be perfect, so I think we all ought to stop trying.”King does not have to worry about Alcaraz or Medvedev. Neither man has any problem talking about being scared or uncomfortable, or sharing whatever thoughts are running through his head, no matter the thousands of people watching in stadiums and the millions more watching on television.And neither player is the worse off for wearing insecurities on his sleeve. Among men, Alcaraz and Medvedev are the only players younger than 29 to have won a Grand Slam singles title: a reflection of how dominant Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer have been during the past decade, too.Alcaraz has been wearing a bucket hat around the All England Club for much of the past two weeks, as though he is headed to an outdoor music festival with his buddies rather than playing in the world’s most important tennis tournament.“Smiling for me, as I said a few times, is the key of everything,” Alcaraz said.Alastair Grant/Associated Press“Lucky hat,” Alcaraz said Wednesday night, as he walked into his postmatch news conference.He then proceeded to talk about the nerves he was experiencing during the tight first set with Rune on Centre Court, the stage that he said last week rattles him every time he walks onto it — especially so on Wednesday.“I couldn’t control it at all,” he said of the tension with which he played on a day when Queen Camilla watched from the Royal Box.He played tight for 65 minutes, the entirety of the first set. But when he clinched it with a backhand return winner down the line, he finally let it all out, he said, with two, full-body roars and two screams of “Vamos.”Only then, he said, did he start to enjoy the moment, and to smile, which is part of his secret sauce.“Smiling for me, as I said a few times, is the key of everything,” he said.Medvedev doesn’t smile much on the court, and for weeks now Medvedev has told everyone not to expect very much of him at this tournament. He hasn’t done very well at Wimbledon in the past. Until this year, he never exceeded the fourth round. He doesn’t have much of a liking for grass-court tennis, preferring the true, predictable bounces produced by hard courts.And there he was Wednesday afternoon on the No. 1 court against Eubanks, who was blasting serves and following them up with drop volleys that Medvedev would barely run for. As Eubanks surged to a two-sets-to-one lead, Medvedev was struggling to focus, he said, and could not understand what was happening to him.The crowd was firmly in the corner of Eubanks, a massive underdog whom the British fans backed, even though he eliminated their top-ranked player, Cameron Norrie, last week. At one point, Medvedev rolled a perfect running backhand winner past Eubanks and put his finger to his ear, asking for some cheers. When they weren’t loud enough, Medvedev shook his hands in disgust.With the score so lopsided, he thought back to five years ago, long before he broke through as one of the most promising players of his generation. He was not having all that much success then, and he had yet to achieve a lot of the things he never thought would be possible: multiple Grand Slam finals, a U.S. Open title in 2021, some stints as the world No. 1.“That’s when I was like, ‘OK, I need to try to turn this match around and to do like I did many times to win these tough, tough battles at the Grand Slam,’” he said.And that’s just what he did, earning a spot in the semifinals against Alcaraz. Still, Medvedev was not ready to say he was at all comfortable on grass.May the most vulnerable man win. More

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      The Soldiers of Wimbledon

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      Abigail Sannoh, a nurse corporal in the Royal Air Force, had tried for years to get a pair of tickets to Wimbledon for herself and her father, Mohamed Sannoh, an avid tennis fan like his daughter. But the effort proved fruitless. So, she found another way into the grounds that enables Sannoh to be at all 14 days of Wimbledon, with a prime view of Centre Court.She applied, and was accepted, to be a service steward, part of a program in which 477 members of Britain’s three military branches work at the world’s most famous tennis tournament as stewards, what Americans call ushers.“My dad got a ticket and was able to see me working here,” Sannoh said last week. “It was such a thrill for both of us.”Since 1946, when soldiers being demobilized from World War II were first given the assignment, noncommissioned officers (mostly corporals and sergeants) have been stationed at the many entrances to each section of Centre Court and Court 1, with strict orders to be helpful, chatty and look smart in their crispy uniforms. It is one of the features that makes Wimbledon such a distinct event, and there are also 250 members of the fire brigade serving as stewards on a handful of the outer courts.Chief James Brooks from the Royal Navy stands guard at Centre Court.Robert Afoh of the Army stands guard at Court No. 1.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesTheir only weapons are a disarming charm and a polite eagerness to help both the fans and their fellow stewards. There are no snarling dogs, bulletproof vests, boots, camouflage fatigues or any of the intimidating regalia often seen at major sporting events elsewhere. Even though these sailors, soldiers and cadets are working, they are not technically on active military duty.“We’re here to make people happy,” said James Brooks, moments after snapping a photo for two fans in front of Centre Court as he walked inside to take his position.Brooks, who served three tours in Afghanistan and has been all over the world on duty, is among the most prominent of the stewards, with a role that is perhaps the closest anyone comes to policing. During changeovers, he and the other service stewards stand at firm attention on the court, looking back toward the stands, to deter any would-be court invaders.Next to him on Friday was Miriam Charlton, who has spent 37 years in the Navy. She started at a challenging time for military women, who were given little if no consideration when they had children, sometimes transferred from one base to another until they quit. She was sent to the Falklands for six months from 1994 to 1995 after having two children, and was allowed only one phone call a week for three minutes.The closest form of policing the stewards have is deterring any fans who would run onto the court during breaks in play.She stuck with the military and attitudes changed enough that she was asked to form a small parental support unit to help parents in the navy. Charlton said that The Navy now retains over 90 percent of women after they have children, as opposed to 52 percent when she started the program seven years ago. She received an M.B.E. distinction (Member of the Order of the British Empire) from Princess Anne for her work.To be honored like that is fine, but getting to watch Wimbledon up close on Centre Court for 14 straight days?“It doesn’t get any better,” she said. “It’s up there among the top moments of my career.”Each year, about 1,000 members of the military apply for the coveted positions and 40 percent of the stewards are new each year.“I don’t want it to be a club where some people feel they can never get a chance to do it,” said Lt. Cdr. Chris Boucher, the officer in charge of all the stewards. “No one has a special right to be here.”There is no rank at Wimbledon, either, said Boucher, whose job in the Navy is to mobilize personnel for everything from the queen’s funeral to tactical operations around the globe. The stewards address one another with first names in an informal, collegial and respectful atmosphere, other than a few rare instances over the years.“There is no rank unless there needs to be,” he said.The other very visible military stewards, especially on television, are the three stationed in the Royal Box, which is run entirely by the service stewards. They all dress immaculately, as if presenting for inspection. There isn’t one, but it is almost unheard-of for anyone to be seen with spaghetti sauce or coffee stains on their bright white, blue or khaki shirts.A member of the Army guards the Royal Box.A member of the Royal Marines stands guard during the match between Andy Murray and Stefanos Tsitsipas.“Millions of eyes are on you,” Boucher said. “Don’t be that person.”Katie Patterson, a corporal in the Royal Air Force police, was stationed at Gangway 6 on Court No. 1 on Sunday, helping spectators find seats and politely asking loud fans in the corridor for “a bit of hush.” Spectators love asking about her R.A.F. duties and make photo requests.One small girl was particularly smitten, so Patterson gave her rank slide (the insignia on her shoulder indicating her rank) to the girl, who was overjoyed. Patterson had a chance to be smitten, too, when Nick Grimshaw, a popular television and radio personality, was waiting in line at Gangway 6. They chatted for several minutes and, like many fans, he wanted to know about her life in the air force.George Fynn Carr of the Navy was working Gangway 6 with Patterson in one of many interservice partnerships that are forged during the tournament. Pairs take turns in their positions, one at the base of the stairs helping people in line, and another at the top, who is able to show fans their seats and then watch the action. They should also be attuned to any lost or unruly fans, or any situation requiring attention.A huge tennis fan, Carr emigrated from Ghana 14 years ago and joined the Navy after attaining British citizenship. Much of his time at Wimbledon is spent posing for photographs in his white and navy blue uniform and hat, and answering questions about all his deployments — Crete, Guam, Kenya, the mainland United States.“Being here is a privilege, even though we are working,” said Suen Simpson, a staff sergeant in the Army.“On a ship, you are on a metal container on the ocean and you have to be a team,” Carr said. “It is the same here at Wimbledon.”As Carr spoke, an Army noncommissioned officer from a different gangway informed him that “two blokes” were hopping over rows of seating, clearly without tickets. Carr immediately left to investigate.To join this elite force, stewards must use their leave, which eats up two weeks of vacation time. But one of the rewards comes on the first Saturday of the tournament each year, when an announcement is made recognizing their contributions. Fans rise to their feet with a sustained ovation in an emotional display of appreciation.“Being here is a privilege, even though we are working,” said Suen Simpson, a staff sergeant in the Army, who would not reveal the locations of her deployments. For these two weeks, though, she is stationed at Gangway 22 on Court No. 1 at one of the biggest sporting events in the world.“It’s a blessing I was selected,” she said. More

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      At Wimbledon, Is It Time for Hawk-Eye Live to Replace the Line Judges?

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      Line judges made incorrect calls in the first week that changed the trajectory of matches for Andy Murray, Bianca Andreescu and Venus Williams, among others. Is it time to give computers the job?Andy Murray was a victim.Bianca Andreescu was too.Jiri Lehecka had to play a fifth set and essentially win his third-round match twice.Hawk-Eye Live, an electronic line calling system, could have saved the players their set, even their match, but Wimbledon doesn’t use it to its full extent, preferring a more traditional approach. The rest of the year on the professional tours, many tournaments rely exclusively on the technology, allowing players to know with near certainty whether their ball lands in or out because the computer always makes the call.But when players come to the All England Club for what is widely regarded as the most important tournament of the year, their fates are largely determined by line judges relying on their eyesight. Even more frustrating, because Wimbledon and its television partners have access to the technology, which players can use to challenge a limited number of calls each match, everyone watching the broadcast sees in real time if a ball is in or out. The people for whom the information is most important — the players and the chair umpire, who oversees the match — must rely on the line judge.When the human eye is judging serves traveling around 120 m.p.h. and forehand rallies faster than 80 m.p.h., errors are bound to happen.“When mistakes are getting made in important moments, then obviously as a player you don’t want that,” said Murray, who could have won his second-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth set, if computers had been making the line calls. Murray’s backhand return was called out, even though replays showed the ball was in. He ended up losing in five sets.No tennis tournament clings to its traditions the way Wimbledon does. Grass court tennis. Matches on Centre Court beginning later than everywhere else, and after those in the Royal Box have had their lunch. No lights for outdoor tennis. A queue with an hourslong wait for last-minute tickets.Those traditions do not have an effect on the outcome of matches from one point to the next. But keeping line judges on the court, after technology has proved to be more reliable, has been affecting — perhaps even turning — key matches seemingly every other day.To understand why that is happening, it’s important to understand how tennis has ended up with different rules for judging across its tournaments.Before the early 2000s, tennis — like baseball, basketball, hockey and other sports — relied on human officials to make calls, many of which were wrong, according to John McEnroe (and pretty much every other tennis player). McEnroe’s most infamous meltdown happened at Wimbledon in 1981, prompted by an incorrect line call.“I would have loved to have had Hawk-Eye,” said Mats Wilander, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and a star in the 1980s.But then tennis began experimenting with the Hawk-Eye Live judging system. Cameras capture the bounce of every ball from multiple angles and computers analyze the images to depict the ball’s trajectory and impact points with only a microscopic margin for error. Line judges remained as a backup, but players received three opportunities each set to challenge a line call, and an extra challenge when a set went to a tiebreaker.That forced players to try to figure out when to risk using a challenge they might need on a more crucial point later in the set.“It’s too much,” Wilander said. “I can’t imagine making that calculation, standing there, thinking about whether a shot felt good, how many challenges I have left, how late is it in the set.”Even Roger Federer, who was good at nearly every aspect of tennis, was famously terrible at making successful challenges.Hawk-Eye Live cameras along the outer courts at the U.S. Open in 2020.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore long, tennis officials began considering a fully electronic line calling system. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, tournaments were looking for ways to limit the number of people on the tennis court.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said adopting electronic calling in 2021 was also a part of the Australian Open’s “culture of innovation.” Players liked it. So did fans, Tiley said, because matches moved more quickly.Last year, the U.S. Open switched to fully electronic line calling. There is an ongoing debate about whether the raised lines on clay courts would prevent the technology from providing the same precision as on grass and hardcourts. At the French Open and other clay court tournaments, the ball leaves a mark that umpires often inspect.In 2022, the men’s ATP Tour featured 21 tournaments with fully electronic line calling, including stops in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Canada; and Washington, D.C. All of those sites have women’s WTA tournaments as well. Every ATP tournament will use it beginning in 2025.“The question is not whether it’s 100 percent right but whether it is better than a human, and it is definitely better than a human,” said Mark Ein, who owns the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.A spokesman for the All England Club said Sunday that Wimbledon has no plans to remove its line judges.“After the tournament we look at everything we do, but at this moment, we have no plans to change the system,” Dominic Foster said.Line judges at Wimbledon are responsible for ruling the ball in or out.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesOn Saturday, Andreescu became a casualty of human error. The 2019 U.S. Open champion from Canada, Andreescu has been going deeper into Grand Slam tournaments after years of injuries.With the finish of her match against Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in sight, Andreescu resisted asking for electronic intervention on a crucial shot the line judge had called out. From across the net Jabeur, who had been close to the ball as it landed, advised Andreescu not to waste one of her three challenges for the set, saying the ball was indeed out. The match continued, though not before television viewers saw the computerized replay that showed the ball landing on the line.“I trust Ons,” Andreescu said after Jabeur came back to beat her in three sets, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.Andreescu explained that she was thinking of her previous match, a three-set marathon decided by a final-set tiebreaker, during which she said she “wasted” several challenges.Against Jabeur, she thought, “I’m going to save it, just in case.”Bad idea. Jabeur won that game, and the set, and then the match.Over on Court No. 12, the challenge system was causing another kind of confusion. Lehecka had match point against Tommy Paul when he raised his hand to challenge a call after returning a shot from Paul that had landed on the line. His request for a challenge came just as Paul hit the next shot into the net.The point was replayed. Paul won it, and then the set moments later, forcing a deciding set. Lehecka won, but had to run around for another half-hour. Venus Williams lost match point in her first-round match on another complicated sequence involving a challenge.Leylah Fernandez, a two-time Grand Slam finalist from Canada, said she likes the tradition of line judges at Wimbledon as the world cedes more to technology.Then again, she added, if “it did cost me a match, it would have been probably a different answer.”Andy Murray learned after his loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas that his shot, called out by a line judge, was in and could have changed the outcome of the match.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is where Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion, found himself after his loss Friday afternoon. By the time he arrived at his news conference, he had learned that his slow and sharply angled backhand return of serve that landed just a few yards from the umpire had nicked the line.The point would have given him two chances to break Tsitsipas’s serve and serve out the match. When he was told the shot was in, his eyes opened with a startle, then fell toward the floor.Murray now knew what everyone else had seen.The ball had landed under the nose of the umpire, who confirmed the call, Murray said. He could not imagine how anyone could have missed it. He actually likes having the line judges, he added. Perhaps it was his fault for not using a challenge.“Ultimately,” he said, “the umpire made a poor call that’s right in front of her.” More

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      How Do Wimbledon’s Grass Courts Keep Dry in All the Rain?

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      The court services crews at the All England Club deploy 18 tarps at a time to keep precious grass courts dry. They’re not above fetching a player a banana or a soft drink, either.High atop the outer south wall of Centre Court at Wimbledon, a small rectangle has been cut away in the lush, green ivy, revealing a digital number that few, if any, of the 42,000 spectators entering the grounds each day of the tournament ever notice.Similar to coastal warning pennants, it is a signal system — from 1 to 8 — issued from Wimbledon’s own crack meteorology department, for the tarpaulin crews to stand by or rush into action. A “1” means possible showers. A “2” means the chair umpire has the discretion to halt the match. On Saturday, when the first rain drops fell on an already rain-soaked Wimbledon, the signal clicked to “4” from “3.”Instantly, Richard “Winston” Sedgwick, standing on the last row of Court No. 3, where he could see across to the digital beacon on Centre Court, used a simple hand signal to relay the information to the crews, which rushed to action. A six-member team ran onto the court, grabbed purple cords to unwrap an 8,000-square-foot tarpaulin and hauled it over the court in about one minute, with the captains shouting out instructions heard all about the grounds, similar to rowing teams: “Three, two, one, pull,” and “Stay together. Again!”“There’s pressure to get it done properly,” Sedgwick said. “If you don’t, they can’t play. So we have to work really hard and really fast.”The members of the covering crews are arguably the most important people at Wimbledon, their swift, precise action protecting the delicate grass, allowing tennis to continue on each of the 18 courts at what is usually the rainiest Grand Slam event of the year.It is a physical job, requiring a certain degree of athleticism, and if there is a day with intermittent showers and the tarp goes on and off several times, by the end of that day, the physical toll renders the crews “shattered,” Sedgwick said.A small digital readout above Centre Court showed a “1,” which indicated all clear to the court crews at Wimbledon.George Spring, a cattle farmer in New South Wales, Australia, has been Wimbledon’s court services manager for 22 years, overseeing the entire process. It begins when his wife, Louise, recruits the several dozen university students who form the crews. In all, 200 people work on the court services crews over the two-week tournament.They train for four days before the tournament, including a pair of half days on court, where they learn and practice how to pull the tarps on, take them off, and set up the nets and the rest of the court for play once the rain stops.Movements must be in concert, and the crews rehearse their ballet well before the first ball is struck.“It’s like sporting teams,” Spring said. “If you’ve got a good captain and good leadership, you’ll be in good shape.”The crews have been especially important at this Wimbledon, where rain has interrupted five of the first six days. It has created havoc with the schedule and forced many players to work on back-to-back days, which is never the plan at a two-week event like Wimbledon. Through the first six days, 96 matches were suspended, including 34 on Wednesday and 30 on Saturday. Several doubles teams had not even played their first matches by Saturday.And this is not even the rainiest Wimbledon — not even close.“I was here in 2007, where it was famous for rain,” Spring said. “There wasn’t a day we didn’t pull a cover on the courts.”George Spring, the court services manager at Wimbledon, stayed in touch with the tournament’s meteorology department on Saturday.The two main show courts, Centre Court and No. 1 Court, have retractable roofs, but the crews still deploy even larger tarps, requiring 20 people vs. the six on the outer courts, while the roofs are closing. Centre Court is the only one with full-time Wimbledon employees on the job.The court services crews arrive at 7:30 a.m. and work until about 10:30 p.m. each day. Tarps can be slippery and heavy and people are moving fast, so occasionally a crew member sprains an ankle or tweaks a muscle.On No. 1 Court, Elinor Beazley, who grew up in Wales and played tennis for Northern Arizona University (she is transferring to Youngstown State this fall), has been pulling the tarp for two years.Last year was a mostly sunny affair, and she found herself hoping for rain just to get into the action. When it arrived, the adrenaline began to pump.“I was so nervous,” she said. “The crowd was screaming and I was getting really bubbly on my toes. It’s so exciting and such a fun experience. It’s a bit of a performance doing it in front of all those people.”When she got back to Arizona, she said, she told her teammates, “All of you need to come to Wimbledon. You watch the best tennis in the world up close, and it’s like being on a team.”The court services crews are also responsible for other tasks, like holding umbrellas over the heads of the players during changeovers and providing them with towels and drinks, but they can fulfill other unique requests, too. Spring said that a player once asked for a soft drink, which is not part of the usual sports-hydration liquids available on each court. Spring went to the concession stand, bought a soda and brought it back.One year, when the bananas kept on hand for players were too green, Spring said, he sent a crew member to a grocery store in Wimbledon town on a bicycle to procure ripe ones. Rafael Nadal, who did not play this year, likes a particular kind of dried date, which Spring gets from the commissary on the grounds. On Saturday night, there was a request for room-temperature water.But the most important job is getting those tarps on and off the courts quickly and completely. When the digital beacons (there are a few, posted on both sides of Centre Court and on the outer walls of No. 1 Court) flashes a “5,” it is the call to inflate the tarp. After a crew has secured the tarp with large clips, blowers inflate it from the corners. Within seconds a dome, 6 feet high in the center, is formed, like a giant bouncy castle. If the rain is expected to pass quickly, the tarp is not inflated at all.The tarp is inflated on Court No. 3 during a rain delay Saturday at Wimbledon.A “6” means deflate; “7” is the call to uncover and roll up the tarp, which can weigh two tons when it is wet, Spring said. When it is secured, an “8” will flash, which means it is time to dress the courts — replace the nets, set up the chairs and distribute the towels and drinks for the players.Colored cords wrapped inside the rolled-up tarp make it all much simpler. The crew members pull purple ones to unfurl the tarp in the rain and green ones to roll it back up when the skies clear. The entire uncovering process, including setting up the nets, takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes.At night, the crews put the tarps back on again. On Saturday, play was suspended on all of the outer courts because of the rain. When it stopped, the crews pulled the tarps off again, but only for less than an hour. The tarp pullers were so efficient in keeping the court dry that the grass had to be watered at the end of the day.Spring said that in all his years, there have been a few times where malfunctions caused delays of an hour or so, but never for a whole day.“That is probably why I’m still here,” he said.And at Wimbledon, so is the rain. More

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      Has Wimbledon’s Beguiling Grass Robbed the Grand Slam of Its Magic?

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      Casper Ruud, the three-time Grand Slam tournament finalist, took a nontraditional approach to getting ready for Wimbledon, which is widely considered the most prestigious tournament in tennis.It included attending more concerts featuring his favorite singer, the Weeknd, than playing actual tennis matches on grass.Unsurprisingly, Liam Broady, a 29-year-old journeyman from Britain who is ranked 142nd in the world, knocked Ruud out in the second round on Thursday. Ruud, ranked No. 4 in the world, was OK with that. “He’s a much better grass court player than myself,” Ruud said of Broady.There was a time when many of the best tennis players made succeeding at Wimbledon the focus of their seasons, and some considered their careers incomplete unless they had won in the cradle of the sport. Everyone from Rod Laver to Martina Navratilova has said they came to Wimbledon to connect with the roots of the sport.Nowadays, with the growth in prominence of the other three Grand Slam tournaments and the grass court season evolving into a quirky, roughly one-month detour from the rest of the tennis calendar, many top players can’t find the time or the head space to make being good on grass a priority. If it costs them tennis immortality, so be it.Grass flew from under Andy Murray’s feet during his match with Stefanos Tsitsipas on Centre Court.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesBlasphemous as it is to say, to plenty of players, even great ones, Wimbledon has become just another Grand Slam tournament.“I don’t know if winning Wimbledon is, in my view, more bigger than winning the U.S. Open or winning the Australian Open,” said Victoria Azarenka, the former world No. 1. “They’re all very important tournaments.”In part, Wimbledon has itself to blame. In the early 2000s, with ever-improving racket and string technology helping players hit the ball with newfound power, Wimbledon began to sow its courts entirely with perennial ryegrass instead of the mix of ryegrass and red fescue it had used. The switch made the courts more durable and delivered cleaner, higher bounces, allowing the surfaces to play a lot more like a hard court than a ruddy ice rink.Around the same time, the French Open made its courts harder and faster, which basically caused the extinction of the clay court specialist who won in Paris but nowhere else. Within a few years, play at the four Grand Slam tournaments had become more similar than different. The same players starting winning nearly all of them, and the accumulation of Grand Slam tournament titles over the course of a career became the dominant tennis narrative, rather than who could win that august title in front of members of the British royal family in their courtside box.Still, it remains true that grass court tennis is different from all other tennis, and the All England Club continues to have plenty of fans.They include nearly all of the British players, many of whom grew up chasing tennis balls on grass at their local clubs, and Novak Djokovic, now considered the greatest player of the Open Era, which began in 1968. He marks the beginning of his tennis life with watching Wimbledon on television as a small boy. Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, both top Americans, said they wished the grass court season were longer, because it suited their styles and had a purity to it.Bob Bryan, the U.S. Davis Cup captain and the winner of four Wimbledon doubles titles, said nothing raised goose bumps like walking through the wrought-iron gates of the All England Club.Murray and Tsitsipas had to finish their second-round match, interrupted by Wimbledon’s curfew, on Friday.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times“It is the sport’s Holy Grail,” Bryan said. “There is nothing like it.”Yes, but that darn grass — that classic surface on which three of the four Grand Slam tournaments used to be contested — has virtually disappeared from the sport.Daniil Medvedev of Russia said he had always appreciated so much about Wimbledon — the flowers, all a perfect color and in just the right spot; the food; the plush locker rooms. But then you have to play on grass, which can make even the best of the best feel as if they are terrible at tennis.“You lose, you go crazy,” Medvedev said. “You’re like, ‘No, I played so bad.’”Stefanos Tsitsipas spent a chunk of the interregnum between the French Open and Wimbledon posting on social media from luxurious locales with his new “soul mate,” Paula Badosa of Spain, a star of the women’s tour, rather than practicing on grass.He said a win on clay, especially at the French Open, left him feeling gritty and dirty and spent in the best way. On grass, he said, it can feel clean and a bit empty, though he looked far from that Friday after he had beaten Andy Murray, one of the game’s great grass court players, on Centre Court.For the men, there is another issue. Djokovic has been so good here for so long, having won the last four Wimbledon men’s singles titles, seven overall and 31 consecutive matches — that the rest of the field sometimes figures, what’s the point?“He seems like he’s getting better,” said Lorenzo Musetti, the rising Italian, who only recently started winning on grass — somewhat to his surprise. He said he had struggled there because everywhere else he could stand up and whale away on the ball. At Wimbledon, even with the new grass, the ball stays low enough to make players essentially hold a squat for three hours and use their feet and their calf and thigh muscles to drive their movements, like ski racers coming down a slope. That may be one reason Djokovic excels — he was a standout skier before he went all in on tennis — and many tall players have no use for the demands of grass.Women struggle, too. Iga Swiatek — the world No. 1, who has never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon — said her deep runs at the French Open, which she has won the past two years, prevented her from having enough time to rest and play enough matches to acclimate to the unpredictable bounces on grass. She said she had considered training on grass in the off-season in November and December but had decided it would leave her unprepared for the Australian Open in January.Iga Swiatek slipped during her first-round match against China’s Zhu Lin on Monday.Hannah Mckay/Reuters“Throughout the whole year, I’m not really thinking about that,” she said of grass prep.Alexander Davidovich Fokina, a Spaniard who is promising and dangerous on clay and hardcourts, said he struggled with his confidence as soon as he stepped on grass.“Just very, very hard,” he said.Then there is Andrey Rublev, another Russian, who described grass as a maddening, anxiety-provoking form of tennis, with short rallies and results that could seem illogical.“You feel so confident, and then you go on court and the guy, he makes four aces, two returns, unreal — out of nowhere, he breaks you, and the set is over,” Rublev said. “And maybe sometimes you feel super tight, like, I cannot move, I cannot put one ball in the court. And then the guy does two double faults, and the ball hits the frame of your racket and goes in, you break him, and then you win a set.”Medvedev doesn’t even think playing the preparatory grass tournaments makes much of a difference, because grass is different in Germany, the Netherlands and the various locales in England. He said that the field courts at the All England Club played extremely fast and that the stadium courts were slow.Will he ever feel at home on the grass? After his second-round win on Friday, he said he might be getting closer.“Maybe at the door,” he said. “Not inside, but at the door.”As for Ruud, he said after his loss that he would keep trying but that winning Wimbledon might not be in the cards. Every time he cuts loose on his lethal forehand, he feels as if he is going to tumble and get injured because of how he lands and then has to push off to chase the next shot.He did enter the men’s doubles tournament, which would allow him to stick around for a bit before he gets back to some clay court tennis in Europe later this month, but he pulled out on Saturday citing shoulder pain.Now he has more free time on his hands, with The Weeknd playing two concerts in London this weekend.A worn patch of grass near the center of the baseline at Centre Court.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times More

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      The Tennis ‘Pilgrimage’ to the Wimbledon Queue

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      Thousands are waiting, even camping out, in rainy England for a chance to see one Wimbledon match. For some, it is an annual ritual, a pilgrimage for the love of tennis.Tom O’Neill and Roz McArdle stood in Wimbledon’s famous ticketing queue with barely a hope of getting inside the grounds. It was 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, there were 4,000 people ahead of them, and they were told by a steward that it was “enormously unlikely” they would get inside.But they, and hundreds of others, clinging to the tiniest flicker of hope that they might get to see at least one match in the citadel of tennis, persistently inched along the snaking line.“We might as well give it a shot,” McArdle said. “We left work around 4 and got here about 5. If we don’t make it, maybe we’ll come back on Friday.”They were doing what people have done for more than a century, joining a line that weaves through an adjacent golf course and down Church Road to a ticket office, where each person, some of whom wait in line for over 24 hours, can purchase one ticket, for that day only, to attend the most famous tennis tournament in the world.Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance through a public ballot system, and allocates some tickets to tennis clubs and residents who live near the All England Club.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times“It’s totally worth it,” said Shreyas Dharmadhikari, a defense lawyer from Jabalpur in central India. “It is a pilgrimage you make for the love of tennis, for the love of Wimbledon.”With a capacity of roughly 42,000 for the grounds, Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance through a public ballot system, and allocates some tickets to tennis clubs and people who live near the All England Club, and through other select means. It is among the hardest tickets to get in sports, but the tournament does provide thousands of daily tickets to the public, if they are willing to wait hours for one.The queue is one of the longest, old-fashioned box office lines in the world, the sports equivalent to the infamous Studio 54 line, but a lot older.Roz McArdle and Tom O’Neill hoped they would get inside for at least one match on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesShreyas Dharmadhikari and his son Arjun waited 5 ½ hours to get inside.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Dharmadhikari brought his son, Arjun, who wore a sticker given out by stewards that read, “I queued in the rain.” They were given holding cards with Nos. 11,466 and 11,477, waited five and a half hours to get inside and were delighted to see several matches and eat strawberries and cream.But on Monday, some people waited nearly twice that long under periodic bursts of persistent rain on a disastrous opening day for the queue. Tournament organizers blamed the delays, which slowed the pace of the line to a crawl, on heightened security searches due to the threat of a climate protest.A protester threw confetti during a match between Sho Shimabukuro and Grigor Dimitrov on Court 18 on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe ball crew picked up confetti and jigsaw pieces that had been thrown on the court.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockThe threat became reality on Wednesday when two protesters ran onto Court No. 18 and flipped over a box of orange confetti. The protesters were led away rather quickly and the match resumed — but only after another rain delay in a tournament plagued by them. After weeks with virtually no precipitation in London, it rained intermittently during the first three days of the tournament, causing havoc within the schedule and in the soggy queue.But even without special circumstances, the queue can be a long (sometimes over a mile), tiresome, adventurous, wet, fun and uniquely British institution.Two schoolboys, Simon, 10, and his brother Stefano, 8, calmly read comic books as they waited on Wednesday, hoping to see their favorite player, the Italian 21-year-old Jannik Sinner, who beat Diego Schwartzman of Argentina in straight sets on Court No. 1.“We have been waiting for maybe two hours,” Simon said, and his brother asked, “Do you think we will make it?”Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesStewards helped organize the queue on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesAbout an hour later, a steward announced to a group somewhere in the middle of the line that there were 1,600 people ahead of them and that he was informed by a ticket manager only 250 more tickets would be released. Gasps of incredulity and disappointment rang out from the group, but no one immediately left.“How you receive this information is entirely up to you,” said the steward, who did everything short of ordering everyone to go home.That would not have been easy for Danielle Payten and her husband, David Payten, who flew from Sydney, Australia, with their three children. They took no chances of being shut out from the daily queue by doing what hundreds do daily. They camped overnight in tents.David Payten, top center, flew from Sydney with his family and camped overnight in tents.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe tent area, where spectators spend the night to ensure they’ll have a good spot in line the following day, is the more festive area of the queue: People play soccer, cards, cricket or read and sip cocktails. The sun broke out Wednesday afternoon, prompting young men in the line to remove their shirts for some spontaneous sunbathing.“It’s like a carnival atmosphere,” said one steward, who asked not to be named because they are not permitted to speak to reporters.The Paytens arrived at 3:30 p.m. and met some folks from the neighboring tents, one of whom had a dog. They chatted, ate and drank as they prepared for a cricket game on a patch of flat grass later that evening. Danielle’s brother, Chris Kearsley, who lives in London, arrived early to set up three tents for them (only two people per tent are given tickets). His daughter, Eliza Kearsley, lives a 15-minute walk from the same mystical venue that her relatives traveled 10,000 miles to see.She popped over just to see her relatives, for neither she nor her father planned to camp out and attend the next day’s matches.“If I stayed overnight, I’d been too drunk to go inside,” Chris Kearsley joked.But with only about 200 people in front of their group, the Australian cousins were virtually guaranteed entrance for Thursday’s matches.“It’s well worth it,” David Payten said. “It’s an adventure.”One traveler from Japan, who planned to stay for most of the two weeks of the tournament, brought a portable, solar powered clothes washer.Maria Balhetchet, a professional violinist from Dorset in southern England, and Felix Bailey, her tennis-playing son, arrived at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, aiming for Thursday’s action. They were given card No. 101, meaning only 100 people were ahead of them. Balhetchet camped out last year with her other son, and even though they scored third-row tickets to an explosive match between the eventual men’s singles finalist Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas, the experience was generally exhausting. Moisture infiltrated the tent, she did not get any sleep and she vowed never to do it again.But there she was on Wednesday.“It’s like giving birth,” she said. “You go through it and say, ‘Never again,’ but then of course you want to.”They were prepared to awake at 6 a.m. Thursday (after being in line almost 18 hours). Campers are given 30 minutes to dismantle their tents and put them in daily storage, then get into the line and wait — wait for it — for four more hours until the gates open. Some people, after watching the tennis, go back to the park, pick up their tents and queue up all over again — hence the need for the washing machine.Among those still hoping to get in on Wednesday was a group of teenage tennis players from the Time to Play Tennis Academy in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Their coach, Doug Robinson, said the group flew from Harare to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and then to London, where they hoped to see Wimbledon live, and then play some matches around England.Late Wednesday afternoon they were still far back in the queue. The kids sat on the ground chatting, and Robinson sized up the situation.“It’s not looking too good from here,” he said. “But it’s Wimbledon. You have to take the chance.”Jane Stockdale for The New York Times More