It was a malevolent, mauve destroyer that consumed every beam of light and doomed the first-round matchup between Frances Tiafoe and Yibing Wu. 3 one day, I watched a colossal cloud approach from the southeast. When I was really lucky, I got to see this happen multiple times over the course of a single match. A crew of six youths crank down the tension in the net, yank the net posts out of the grass, wind up and stow the net, sprint to one side of the court, unstrap the restraints on a rolled-up tarp, unfurl the tarp across the surface of the entire court while grunting in unison like oarsmen, inflate the tarp into a big bouncy balloon so as to protect the sacred grass beneath, wait out the rain, deflate the tarp, roll the tarp back up, strap it up to the wall again, place the net posts back in, and crank the net back up to its correct tension. I was at Wimbledon to embrace its timeless rituals, one of which I witnessed up close, dozens of times, whenever the sky split open. But I was finally here, in front of the grass I’d been staring at on screens for years. That the sum of all this was total enchantment is a testament to the long reign of childhood sports fantasies, or to my low standards for comfort and dignity, or both. Seconds I spent thinking Andy Murray had died on the world's most famous tennis court: roughly 20. Number of occasions on which heavy cream was sipped out of a takeout container in public: two. Percentage of hours intended to watch tennis that were instead spent in the rain without an umbrella: at least 35.
LONDON - An objective tally of my week at Wimbledon would generate some cold facts.
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