Every year I tune in to watch Wimbledon, not just because I’m a tennis fan but because it’s such a beautiful setting for tennis, especially during the first week. Seeing my favorite sport being played on green grass is something I look forward to every day for a fortnight, and then it’s over. Centre Court with its green surroundings, which include green painted brick, is a marvelous spectacle, a theater of drama that never fails to entertain, even thrill.
This part of the pro tennis year is such a contrast to the preceding clay court season, which is played slowly and deliberately on red – the color of STOP – dirt, leaving the combatants, their socks and clothes filthy. Green is the color of GO, and the game is played (though not as fast as it once was) more quickly. Taking risks can be more rewarding and the players stay clean in their white clothing. The crowds are more reserved – one never hears boorish yelling as a player prepares to serve – the blessed silence is broken only by the punctuated grunts, shrieks, screams and exaltations of the battle (annoying as they are).
I was already entranced by the tournament when I first witnessed matches being played on an HDTV, and then I was absolutely captivated, being able to see the blades of grass, the imperfect divots that litter Centre Court by the second weekend, and even goose bumps on the players themselves. Not a lot of work is going to get done around here during this last week of June through July 3rd, that’s for sure.
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