Welcome back, then, to the great British summer picnic, a tournament where somehow it’s always a crazy mid-afternoon and where there are still, it turns out, strawberries for tea.
The All England Club was a cool, cool, windy place as it opened its doors wide for the first time since 2019. There were cold summer rain dumps. The legendary tail could be seen sunbathing before the start of the game, with that familiar feeling of something performative, theatrically static, British for the British, in front of the British. Other nations have parades, parties, parties. We have the plastic strawberry punnet, the cargo short, a stage education.
And overall, it was a day of steady opening, decorated with British success but with a slight half-accelerator feel down the boulevards and walkways. The hill was very green and lush in the rain.
Wimbledon is a place to relax, to soak up the sweetness of summer, to feel lush and rolled up, dizzy and satiated. Restaurants crowded, kiosks buzzed. In the shop below track number 1 they sell large tennis rackets for £ 600. Are we really in this place?
There’s been a lot of eagerness to cling to these pre-pandemic summer pegs: Glastonbury, Wimbledon, queuing endlessly for a seat on a low-cost airline. And this was a red letter day for the All England Club in other ways, with appearances in the first round of the only two British players to win an individual Grand Slam title in the last 45 years, Andy Murray and Emma Raducanu.
Raducanu was the star of the day, winning her first game on the center court. In the end she looked abrupt and fit and really delighted at the end, as all 19-year-olds should do, let alone a teenager who grew up a tram beyond the Croydon plains, and for whom all this still it should feel like a fever. sleep.
Murray caused the loudest roars later in the evening. But then he’s basically the father of Wimbledon these days, with something nice and tender on that tired, pigeon-tipped walk; such a paternal figure. Expect to look down to see him playing with shirt sleeves and vest, with the briefcase swinging with his other hand.
No one has ever had this place like Murray, which is strange considering how things were, before the brazen youth gave way to the detached man, the fears that the Wimbledon crowd would never take him from the pit. We move quickly a decade and a half and basically we have Mr. Darcy on the track, fainting, shiny, gifted.
Emma Raducanu impressed in her direct set win over Alison Van Uytvanck. Photography: Frey / TPN / Getty Images
There was another kind of energy in seeing Raducanu’s victory here, a victory in direct sets against the experienced Belgian Alison Van Uytvanck that could have been much more uncomfortable. This was Raducanu’s first appearance in front of that large coiled gallery, gurgling and gushing down the central court, and the relationship between the audience and the players here is important, in a way that probably shouldn’t be.
There were roars and whistles and a strange shout spread as Raducanu came out under a blue, creepy sky. There were moans and cooings as he unfolded a beautiful rolled upside down, then sighs and whispers as he made a right turn. At the end of 17 minutes, Raducanu finally held the service to make a whole match, with roars from the plastic seats.
Really none of this has to be taken for granted. Raducanu is still a rookie, still trying to find a way to interact with this industry. For anyone with a sense of scale, the story up to this point is not a disappointment or distracting perfume deals (it really could have had many more). Instead, it is a golden race where all the cards fell well, a feat that may well remain unique to her and to anyone else. It is neither tall nor remarkably powerful. It lacks these easy extra weapons, the large wingspan, the prison release service. She can steal and chase. You can fight and solve your opponent. New York is gone. What she faces now are the more standard tests of trying to become an elite tennis player.
There were spikes and break-backs in the first set. The standard went down for a while. But Raducanu passed the second set, to close it 6-4, 6-4. The victory is a genuine success, which was received with joy. “I won my first round in each slam. It hasn’t been … terrible, “he said later, and talked for a while about being 19 in a middle-aged pirate room.
There was still time for Murray to turn on those old family gears as the shadows lit up. These days he is almost indecently relaxed. He also looks good, loose and agile and comfortable in his movements, with a bit of that old bounce, the broken steps, the cut, the lightning in the net.
Of course, Murray also looked tired at the end, but then he looks tired the moment he comes out on the court. Still, though, while James Duckworth wore it at night, you always felt like Murray would hold on while his body continued to function. Here is a muscular memory, shapes, traces, a spool of Murray stuff, Murray noises, Murray shapes that will chase this square of green long after this crouched figure has moved for the last time. The win made it a perfect start, albeit a bit tentative, for the return of the Wimbledon plenary.