Wimbledon: you have to be on your toes to get the best seats

A delay in queueing for tickets can be the difference between seeing the best players and missing out. However, William Johnson, our man in London, discovers there's still plenty to enjoy at SW19.

Tennis fans gather on Murray Mound to watch a big screen of the action at Wimbledon.

Karen Lynch and her three pals were yesterday cursing their love for football at a time when their passion for tennis should have been at fever pitch. Their irresistible urge to react to the noise from a hotel in south west London denied them the opportunity to witness the remarkable escape act of Roger Federer from two sets down and the brink of defeat to the unheralded Colombian Alejandro Falla.

Karen, 25, and her travelling partners Sally, Steph and Joy arrived at Wimbledon railway station shortly after three o'clock on Sunday afternoon buzzing with excitement about what lay in store the following day. Rather than pitch up at the official camp site where non-ticket holders are herded into an orderly queue, they opted to find a big television screen to see Italy toiling in the second match of their World Cup defence against New Zealand.

"We figured that we had plenty of time to watch that match and then put our tent up before going back to watch Brazil play," says Karen. "I just wish we had gone to the camp site straight away because it has cost us the chance of Centre Court tickets." The young women from Cheshire reckoned they were placed at about 1,750th in the queue for the opening day of the 124th Championships, meaning they were 250 or so off the pace when it came to earning the right to buy the cherished tickets for the three main courts.

Karen and company discovered that the last of the 500 Centre Court seats which had not been sold in advance for the opening day of the Championships were handed out to a couple who had arrived just before 3pm. "It was touch and go whether we would have got on Centre to see Federer, but we would certainly have been on No 1 to see Andy Roddick and Venus Williams," she says. "Failing that we would have been on Court Two. Never mind, we've made it into the grounds and we are definitely going to have a great day."

A text message from Sally declared that the happy quartet had opted to spend their sun-drenched day on the new show court No 12. "We couldn't believe that [Justine] Henin was playing there," the text message read. "And there are some good men [Marin Cilic and Tomas Berdych, seeded 11th and 12th respectively] on before her." They overlooked the fact that they were at the scene of the latest episode of what has become a depressing Wimbledon tradition: an early exit of a player from the host nation who had high hopes of making progress.

This time it was Elena Baltacha who performed the well-practised British act of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. She served for the match against Petra Martic, the lower-ranked Croatian, before losing it tamely in the deciding set. Meanwhile, pride of place in that early-morning queue which, by the time the gates opened at 10.30am, had stretched for approximately a mile down Church Road towards the nearest underground station at Southfields, was claimed by a party of 20 Australians on a five-week European tour.

All kitted out identically in their yellow and green national colours, they stood out in the streets of the English capital like beacons. Kyle Freeman was their reluctant spokesman and revealed that they had passed up the chance of Centre Court tickets in order to offer substantial patriotic Court Two support for two of their compatriots. The decision was based mainly on the desire to watch Lleyton Hewitt, who remains the last Australian player to win a grand slam after his 2002 final victory over David Nalbandian, of Argentina. But the bonus offering of seeing Bernard Tomic, their teenage qualifier, open the proceedings against Mardy Fish made the choice even easier.

"We were right on the borderline for the first 500 tickets," Kyle says, "so some of our group could probably have got on Centre. But we all chose to support Lleyton. You've got to fly the national flag if you come all this way." The Aussies, pocketed together directly across from the umpire's chair, were required to show great patience in readiness for welcoming their hero. Hewitt, the 15th seed, had to wait for Kim Clijsters, the reigning US Open women's champion, to launch the programme at midday. Then after Tomic's straight-sets defeat Hewitt sat and monitored the progress of Francesco Schiavone, the French Open champion who began her challenge for an unlikely grand slam double.

Frequent visitors to Wimbledon were taken aback yesterday by the disappearance of the old Court Two, the notorious "Graveyard of Champions". Temporarily renamed Court Three 12 months ago following the opening of a new Court Two arena at the far corner of the grounds, it has now been demolished to prepare for the opening of a new Court Three next year. [e-mail]