Saturday, June 16, 2007

Stella Artois: Surprise, It Rained

Last year, when I realized that Wimbledon tickets would be impossible to get, and that I was not going to queue for tickets with the kiddies, I entered a lottery for Stella Artois Championship tickets. The Stella Artois is the warm-up tournament for the men preparing for Wimbledon. It's held at the Queen's Club, an amazing facility, that was featured in the Woody Allen film Match Point.

We were lucky enough to get four tickets, and brought our friends, Tracy and Paul Longhurst. We arrived just in time for the skies to open with torrential rain. It poured buckets of rain for three hours.

The delay enabled us to experience another British tradition, Pimm's cocktails. This beverage is almost as much a tradition as the cup of tea, and the British down the gin-based drink by the gallon during the summer months. To make the cocktail, take one slice of orange, lemon, apple, cucumber per person and one sprig of mint and add to two parts lemonade (in England, lemonade = Sprite) to one part Pimms. It's quite yummy, and we'll bring home a bottle for happy hour at the beach.

Any-hoo, after three of these cocktails and watching the privileged set in action, the rain stopped and we returned to the courts. We watched Andy Roddick dispatch with Dmitry Tursunov in an hour. Unfortunately, our babysitting time was running out so we had to leave. Roddick ended up winning the tournament the next day. I'm not sure he's ready for Federer.

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