Wimbledon Diary

Early mornings at Wimbledon have the feel of a Grand National about them this first week. Officials initially allow people through the main gates but once inside, the walkways and stairways to the courts are taped off.

So crowds gather in what is essentially a large outdoor foyer, or containment area right beside the Centre Court and number one courts. The stewards then cut the tapes (which the Wimbledon fans dutifully stay behind without rancour) and the crowds set off to claim their places.

Like Aintree, though, there are occasionally a few fallers at the first.

Murphy's law

The only Irish influence on any of the show courts yesterday was on court one, where Marat Safin was scheduled to face Pakistan's only competitor in the main draw, Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi. The man in the hot seat, or, given yesterday's weather the cold, wet seat, was none other than umpire Fergus Murphy. Umpire Murphy has, in the past, had to politely ask the surly Russian to get down off his chair. But not so yesterday, as rain washed out the late games.

Bottom line

The fashion police were looking kind of strangely at court 14 yesterday where French 19-year-old Tatiana Golovin began her match against Taipei's Miss Su-Wei Hsieh in what looked like a cut off, pirate-style, tracksuit bottom and what informed sources say was a halter neck white top. After two games, however, Golovin reverted to type and removed the tracksuit. Turns out that because it was so cold yesterday for the match that began at 12.00, she was simply keeping on as much clothes as she could. But that wasn't the end of it. The first passage of conversation in her post-match interview went like this

Q.Can I ask you about your knickers?

Golovin: Excuse me?

Q. Are you wearing red?

Golovin: Are they? They're supposed to match the dress.

Q. But the dress is white and the knickers are red.

Golovin: There's a little red outline and they say red is the colour that proves you're confident, so I'm happy with my red knickers.

Tennis at Wimbledon has certainly moved on.

Flag etiquette

Wimbledon security is sometimes seen to be over-zealous in its approach to what fans can bring into the All England club grounds. Last year a spectator was told she could not bring in two bottles of drinking yoghurt on the spurious grounds that one bottle constitutes a picnic and two is ambush marketing. This year security are to confiscate any flag measuring over 2ft by 2ft. So when you see those giant Serb flags on television when Jelena Jankovic or Novak Djokovic are playing, you can assume there has been a security breach.