For some reason, I fell in love with watching Wimbledon when I was a kid. I never really played tennis and I don’t really follow it closely. Nevertheless, every year I spent a fortnight in front of the TV thoroughly enjoying myself. Maybe it’s the class and tradition that’s so rare in most sporting events today. I have great memories of a lot of the matches I’ve watched through the years. My favorite is laying on the floor at Grandpa and Grandma Vander Well’s house in Le Mars watching the classic tennis match of all time, the 1980 Wimbledon final between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe.
I could tell Wendy was a bit surprised the other day to find me on the couch intently watching tennis, but I think she’s gotten sucked into the vortex with me. Once I helped her figure out the rules and scoring she started watching a few matches with me. You know, I’ve always thought that women tend to enjoy watching a sport if they understand the game and know a little something about the people playing. It puts the game into more of the context of a story – a personal drama – instead of nameless bodies running around doing something they don’t understand.
Anyway, it’s been fun. Yesterday we found ourselves in withdrawl because the tournament took it’s mid-way break and they were rerunning Saturday’s matches. So, we went on the Wimbledon website checking out the brackets and figuring out who’s left. Personally, I don’t think Roger Federer can be beat on grass, but I’d love to see a rematch between him and Nadal.
If you need to find us this week, we’re probably home in front of the TV watching tennis.
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