Talking Sport with Craig Salmon: Serena return a one-off or could she add to her fairytale life story?

I cannot think of too many sporting venues across the world which accommodate people camping for several days in order to secure a spectator ticket.

It’s been a feature of the championships for as long as I can remember with the All England Club retaining a small number of tickets for the show courts each day, barring the latter stages of the tournament, for those willing to spend all night in the fresh air.

Despite being a big tennis fan, I’ll be honest – I have never pitched up at SW19 with a tent and a foldable chair.

However, I do have experience of the queue inadvertently as it happens.

It was back in 2004 when I managed to get hold of two tickets for Court No.1 for the middle Saturday of the Championships.

My dad and I booked a nearby hotel for the weekend and we headed off bright and early with our tickets looking forward to sampling the unique atmosphere of Wimbledon for the very first time.

There was no need for us to queue as we showed our tickets to enter the grounds, but as soon as we did...Yes, you’ve guessed it – it started raining.

It was not a heavy downpour, just a light drizzle which, I am sorry to say, continued for the rest of the day!

We did not see a ball hit in anger, the highlights of the day for us were walking past Cliff Richard and seeing Roger Federer fleetingly appear on a balcony to hold his hand out to check if it was still raining or not.

We did manage to sneak on to Centre Court and were blown away by its majesty.

Unfortunately, the referee abandoned play for the day and we trudged out of the exits. We jumped into a black cab, which we happened to share with the physio of Great Britain’s star player of the time Tim Henman.

He mentioned that because the tournament had a huge backlog of matches, schedulers were considering sanctioning play on the middle Sunday, with his man preparing to play Moroccan Hicham Arazi.

Although Wimbledon in its current guise plays on the middle Sunday, that is only a modern-day phenomenon, first introduced in 2022.

Previously, the day had always been earmarked as a rest day to allow the grass courts to recover after a week of intense play.

But back in 2004, desperate times called for desperate measure and with the forecast predicting a day of fine-ish weather, organisers announced that the championships would stage play on the middle Sunday for only the third time in the tournament’s history, following 1991 and 1997.

Having not seen any tennis at all, my dad and I decided we would extend our stay in London for an extra day.

Popularly coined as ‘People’s Sunday’, the day was obviously not ticketed but meant we would have to get up in the middle of the night to join the ‘famous Wimbledon queue’ to have any chance of gaining decent tickets.

We arrived at the championships at around 2am to find the venue eerily silent. In our naivety, we thought we were the first people to arrive as we searched forlornly for the queue.

Eventually, we stumbled across a steward who pointed us in the direction of a field near Wimbledon Park Road.

As we turned off the road into the field, we were met by a maze of tents and people.

The queue is quite the operation with toilet and refreshment facilities available. We joined the back of it and were handed a numbered card which guaranteed our place in the queue.

Judging by the number on the card, we calculated that we were on course to get Centre Court seats.

There was a certain camaraderie amongst the queuers and campers, with most keen to get seats on Centre Court, although there were a group of Australians keen to head to court No.2 where Aussie star Mark Philippoussis was taking on Chilean Fernando Gonzalez.

Eventually, after a long night, we made it through the gates and found seats on Centre Court directly opposite the umpire’s chair.

We saw Federer - who would go on to win the tournament – beat Swede Thomas Johansson in straight sets before Henman overcame Arazi in four.

The final match of the day saw American Serena Williams take to the court and she promptly thrashed Spanish player Magui Serna.

She would go on to lose the final to Maria Sharapova that year, but would ultimately win seven Wimbledon titles and become arguably the greatest women’s player of all time.

Her and sister Venus’ fairytale rise to the top of the sport is perhaps the greatest story in tennis, if not sport.

Their story is that of two young girls taught by their novice coach dad Richard on vandalised public courts, surrounded by a violent neighbourhood, in Compton, California, to become multiple Grand Slam champions.

After retiring from the sport in 2022 with 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the 44-year-old made a shock comeback this summer when she was given a wildcard into Wimbledon having not played a singles match in nearly four years.

Personally, I was pleased to see her opponent Australia’s Maya Joint – who at 20 was less than half the age of the American legend – win as I felt it would have made a slight mockery of the Tour if Williams, having not played for so long, could win a match at Wimbledon.

However, Williams showed that she is still a great competitor – and ball-striker. With a few more matches under her belt, she will no doubt start winning more than she loses.

Could she win a 24th Grand Slam? Mmmm, it will be a long shot, but I am sure the current players at the top of the game will be having a few sleepless nights over the prospect.