It’s the mid-90s, and I’ve just been introduced to a treasure trove.
My grandma has presented me with her Wimbledon programmes, going back decades and decades. That’s the afternoon gone, as I lose myself in carefully handwritten results from draw after draw of tournaments gone by.
I had recently started to get hooked on tennis, sucked in like most British people by Wimbledon. The splendour, the drama, the raw emotion. Inspired by my mum and grandma, I started filling in full tournament draws and would pull up the Ceefax (look it up) pages with the results on, and painstakingly transcribing them onto my newspaper pull-outs.
In 1997, I got to go to Wimbledon for the first time. Sure enough, it rained pretty much the whole day, up until about 6pm, when finally we saw Jana Novotna beat Wiltrud Probst in three sets on Court 1. Not a classic day, but one that completely captured my imagination.
That same year, I bet my brother £1 that Martina Hingis would win the women’s title. It was hardly a bold prediction — she was the dominant world No 1 at the time — but her doing so convinced me that this was a sport I truly understood.
My first trip to Wimbledon, wearing gloves… and soon to become £1 richer (Charlie Eccleshare)
So 27 years later, here I am, entrusted…
