For thousands of fans, queuing is a Wimbledon tradition

WIMBLEDON, England — For Viv Kean, and thousands of tennis fans like her, the Wimbledon experience always starts in a tent.

In a small park across from the tournament grounds, they gather to camp out for days. The reward is being woken up at 5 a.m. by stewards, then spending hours standing patiently in line to get herded into the All England Club.

And hopefully, after all that waiting, a ticket to Centre Court.

That’s life in “The Queue,” a decadesold Wimbledon tradition that has grown to become its own phenomenon, as much a part of the tennis tournament as strawberries and cream.

Kean, a 69yearold from northwest London, wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“I’ve been coming every year since 1983, except one,” Kean said, sitting in a camping chair outside her tent. “I spent my 50th birthday and my 60th birthday out here. It’s almost more about the queue than about the tennis these days.”

Kean was among more than 2,000 people who showed up to Wimbledon Park last Friday night hoping to be there early enough to get tickets to one of the top courts. Not for Saturday’s thirdround matches — but Monday’s fourth round.

For some of them, even that wasn’t early enough. Only about 500 tickets are made available most days for each of Centre Court, No. 1 Court and No. 2 Court. Several thousand grounds passes are also available each day — the exact number varies — which allow access to the smaller courts.

Alex Leonidis and Ryan Kirkman, two 23yearolds from London, were around 250th in line — meaning they were assured of succeeding in their goal of seeing Roger Federer on Centre Court.

“Last year we camped out one night and got tickets to No. 1 Court. But we’re willing to push it to three for Federer,” Leonidis said.

“He’s a must for us,” Kirkman added. “These days you never know when he might retire. It could be our last chance.”

The queuing tradition at Wimbledon dates back to at least the 1920s. Even Richard Lewis, who is now the chief executive of the All England Club, remembers spending a night on the street as a teenager in the 1960s.

“I was 13 at the time. Queued up on the pavement,” Lewis said. “Saw Rod Laver play Tony Roche in the final.”

For decades, the queue itself started just outside the gates of the All England Club, with people pitching their tents on the sidewalk. But as the numbers grew, so did the problems.

“It was great, but it wasn’t terribly comfortable for people, and potentially the stewards might have got hit by cars,” chief steward Nick Pearce said.

So in 2008, the whole queue was moved to Wimbledon Park, where thousands of people gather each day and get organized into neat rows based on what time they arrived. Food stalls and portable toilets are set up nearby and each morning the long line of people snakes along the outskirts of a picturesque golf course, through a security check, across a covered pedestrian bridge over Church Road and into the tournament grounds.

It’s such a large operation that more than 300 stewards — most of them volunteers — work around the clock to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible.

“If you go there, you first think, ‘God this is absolute chaos, it’s just a mass of people,’” Pearce said. “But when they get up they walk in a wellorderly line.”

For many, it’s the most British thing imaginable.

“We love a good queue,” Leonidis quipped.

But there’s more to it than just standing in line. People pass the time by playing games and engaging in impromptu contests. Even a tennis tournament is held every year.

In 2012, they even organized their own version of the London Olympics in the park. One of the events was to set up a gazebo fastest, while blindfolded.

There are some strict guidelines for proper behavior, though, all laid out in the official guide to queuing that is handed out by the All England Club. Don’t leave your place in the line for more than 30 minutes, for instance — a rule that is meant to ensure people don’t arrive early to get a numbered queue card before leaving to return at a later time. The stewards rarely have to intervene, though, because it’s a system that largely polices itself, Keane said.