I managed to get it and sorted my stuff out.
In the morning there seemed to be a bit of confusion coming from the Twitterverse as to whether people who had online tickets had to join the same queue as the people waiting to get the remaining 1000 tickets that were going to be on sale at the gate. Having experienced the whole “nice-but-dim-ness” of the stewarding staff, I could see how confusion would be reigning…!
However, I got through without any issues – by the time I strolled down there they seem to have sorted themselves out.
I caught up briefly with a couple of the andymurray.com stalwarts and we mooched around for bit, managing to catch a few words with Mohamed Lahyani – legendary ump and in the seat for today’s final. He reckoned it might rain and when we howled in horror, he reckoned that it’d be fine for the final!
Then Andy loped by – I wished him luck and he thanked me – bless him!
We decided to go in and this time I was sat a little further down from the pretty, but pretty ineffectual stewards of days 2 & 3 who were on duty again today.
The trophy was brought out but kinda unceremoniously left on the grass …
… before Andrew castle [/stifles sigh] picked it up and brought it over to the other side in preparation for an interview with Sue Barker; fooling around and lapping it up.
Sue Barker gave the watching spectators a quick run down of what she was going to say as the live link from BBC2 would come to her, and ran through a quick interview with Castle and John Lloyd.
They brought the guys out – Jo all smiley – Andy very… focused!
Warm up over, the first two games went with serve, but there was some sign of initial nerves – Jo struggling from 40-0 up, Andy DFing on his service game.
Some badly misjudged dropshots gave Jo a sticky hold at the end of the first three games.
Another Df from Andy, serving behing but he managed to hold. Jo was striking the ball with some blistering pace. Serving at 2-3 Andy seemed dissatisfied with his racquet and looking bothered, changed it hard way through the game, and was promptly broken to love.
Jo was profiting a lot from a netcord, obviously made in France. He consolidated the break to lead 5-2. Andy mounted a spirited comeback and had a commanding hold in the next game and Jo, conversely, seemed to find his first serves deserting him. Andy had breakpoints here but Jo squeaked a hold to take the first set.
At the start of the second set, Andy started with a hold, but Jo was continuing his commanding play, especially at the net, also holding. The guys were treating the crowd to some amazing rallies and Andy was beginning to get pumped up now, finally.
Neither player was letting up on their levels of intensity which was great for the crowd.
Jo was turning out big serves to save break points and again Andy wasted some chances to make that decisive break.
Giving up those chances had him coming out a bit flat but he still managed to keep things on serve.
By now everyone has been talking about that amazing “tweener” shot that Andy pulled off in the final set… but before we got to that – there was another rather misjudged attempt that took us to a tiebreak. The quality of the rallies was just amazing.
Andy had, and then lost an early advantage in the tiebreak and missed shots from Jo resulted in an anguished “ahh non!” on a few occasions. Andy, serving at 5-2 ahead, won both his serves, to take us into a decider, and by now he was really fired up.
Although the momentum was with him, Andy wasted a number of chances against Jo’s opening service game, but managed to hold his own. By now he was chattering away to himself a lot.
In fact, he started to get the yips a bit coming out to serve after the forst change of ends, although he did manage to hold.
What struck me (and I’ve seen Jo play a few times now) was his movement and coverage at the net. Against a lot of other players, Andy’s passing shots would have ripped past them at the net, but Jo was all over them like a rash.
Finally he managed to convert breakpoints to take the advantage and, more importantly, held his own.
Jo kept things to a single break, and we had that tweener that made it onto all the news bulletins!
Andy came out to serve for the match, and hit those big serves we all know he’s capable off when it really counted, with an appreciative crowd to road it home.
I watched Andy come back from two sets and a break down against Gasquet, and I thought that was one of the best matches I had ever seen. But to watch him win a title was a pretty amazing thing. And it was a GREAT final – I loved that it went to three sets and that it was so competitive – Jo was incredible, and we have this phenomenon about the French actually seemingly to be more at home on the grass than on the Roland Garros clay sometimes! I really hope I get to see him in thart competitive and athletic a match again.
And with that – here I sit writing this up as the heavens are repeatedly opening. I suspect the roof at Wimbledon is going to be getting some use this year.
I have two confirmed days – 2nd Thursday (women’s semis) and Court 1 on Men’s final day. The rest is down to Ticketmaster and clickety-click luck.
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