Tennis at Wimbledon

The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC) is the formal name for Wimbledon.

Today's event was played on Centre (the English spelling) Court.

The tennis at Wimbledon is played on grass courts.  Or at least normally it is. Unfortunately, the Wimbledon tournament was just about a month ago.  This means that almost all of the grass along the baselines has been worn away.  Rather than playing on grass, most of the play is actually contested on dirt.  Here's an interesting article from the New York Times about the challenges of keeping up the grass at Wimbledon.

The first semifinal featured Roger Federer of Switzerland (above) and Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina.

Juan Martin Del Porto

It turned out not to be Del Porto's day.

Federer ended up winning this epic match by a score of 3-6, 7-6 and 19-17.  Yes, you read that right.  At the Olympics, the final set cannot be decided by a tie break; it has to played out until someone wins the set by two games.  They played 36 games in the final set to decide the winner.

The second semifinal featured Victoria Azarenka of Belarus (left) and Serena Williams of the United States (right).

Serena Williams

Victoria Azarenka 

Me and my shadow.

Serena steamrolled Azarenka by a score of 6-1, 6-2  which was a welcome relief after the 56 games played in the first match.

The last semifinal saw Novak Djokvid of Serbia (above) playing hometown favorite Andy Murray (of Great Britain).

Andy Murray

 After winning by a score of 7-5,7-5, Murray seemed stunned by the fact that he won that match.

That didn't stop him from celebrating though.


There wasn't any entertainment at Wimbledon like at some of the other Olympic venues, but the crowd sure seemed to enjoy when Federer and Murray changed shirts.

My daughter Emily and me at Centre Court.