A Day at Wimbledon
… A childhood dream realized and the 12 year old tennis player in me was THRILLED to be there.
Like, absolutely giddy with excitement.
Let me tell you how this happened, because of course it was all a synchronistic dream.
It started back in May when I was preparing for my return to Europe.
As you may remember, my first stop was Rome for a pickleball tournament. As the dates got closer, I realized that the Rome Open (one of the pro tennis tour stops prior to the French Open) was also taking place the following week. I told my mom that maybe we should try to look into getting some tickets while we were there. I had occasionally been checking on grounds pass tickets that maybe we would make it to watch some tennis - getting myself primed for the possibility that we might have the chance to go.
Well, fast forward to that pickle-filled weekend and I was scrolling on Instagram when I saw a girl from Rochester NY (who I used to also teach back when she was in junior & is now a pro doubles player on the WTA tour) had posted to her stories that she was in Rome for this tournament. I immediately reached out to her and said I was in the city too & would love to see her. It would have been even cooler if we could have gotten to see her play!
As it turns out, being a smaller tournament & not a Grand Slam, the tournament gives the players complimentary guest tickets. Since it wasn’t a match day for her, she was able to get me and my parents grounds passes for a day. Woohoo! So, we went to go watch her practice and along with some of the other matches that day.
We ended up chatting for a bit and it was so awesome to see her there. She even shared with me that her dream had always been to play that tournament - how cool is that?!
Her first round match was the next day so I went back to go watch her, because what a moment to see her play a match on the pro tour. I posted about it on IG because it was so neat to see her out there doing her thing. And honestly it made me a little emotional too thinking - here we are, just 2 girls from Rochester NY, traveling around, and doing something we both love.
She was going to spend the next few weeks in Europe competing in tournaments so we said we’d keep in touch in hopes that maybe our schedules would align again.
Well, about a month goes by, and I have a tournament outside of London the last weekend of June. And then I realized that Wimbledon was going to be starting around the same time. OMG - How cool would it be if I could actually go to Wimby for a day?! I texted Quinn to see when she was going to be in London to prepare and it turns out she was arriving that same weekend I had my tournament. I told her I would reach out when I got back to London.
I only had one day (Tuesday) that could’ve worked for me to go since I was leaving for Germany the next morning. For those that don’t know, it’s quite a process to get tickets for Wimbledon. You have to submit through a lottery and if you’re not chosen, then you go wait in the queue as they call it. They do not sell tickets online. Some people go to the fields the night before and camp out to be at the front of the line, or start early in the morning, waiting up to 5 hours for the chance to purchase grounds passes. When I arrived back in London on Monday, I told Quinn that I was looking to go the next day and might look into going to the queue (although truthfully, I really didn’t want to wait hours in line to potentially get a ticket). She said she would look into getting a ticket for me, but said since she wasn’t playing that day, the best she could do was put me on a list where I could purchase a discounted grounds pass through a link & to be on the lookout for an email.
A few hours went by and she told me I would be getting an email soon. It was about 9pm when I saw that there had been a ticket transferred to me from her coach! Like, YAY!!! I was totally expecting to pay and instead, I received a gift. That whole next day, I felt like a little kid, with wide-eyed wonder walking around the grounds. Just so grateful to be there. I got there right when matches started at 11am and stayed till about 9pm before heading off the airport. I don’t think the smile left my face all day. Quinn came by while I was sitting on the hill and we hung out for a few minutes before she had to go.
So, if there’s one thing to take from this - release the grip of HOW and just being open to receiving & the possibility of thing you want to happen, might actually happen. 💫
