Racket repairs \u2013 while you wait<\/p>\n
While thousands of fans shuffle around the grounds and soak up Wimbledon\u2019s familiar mood of British unflappability, behind the scenes there is a hive of activity to keep the show on the road. Nowhere more so than at the restringing facility, which processed a record 6,565 rackets at last year\u2019s tournament \u2013 an average of nearly 500 per day. \u201cThe balls change slightly every year,\u201d says Josh Sillick, on the stall run by the tournament\u2019s official \u201crestringing partner\u201d Babolat. \u201cIf they get fluffier more quickly, then the players have to hit them harder, and heat can make a difference too. When a player breaks a string, they can hand it over [to a ballboy or ballgirl] and they\u2019ll run over to get it restrung, and they can get it done in 10 or 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all in the head<\/p>\n
As if there were not enough numbers for stats geeks to get their teeth into once the action is under way, the SW19 data supply has a fresh stream of info to ponder this year in the form of \u201cmental\u201d analysis, alongside the familiar figures for first-serve percentages, returns in play (and lots, lots more). And while it is hardly news that some points are far more significant than others \u2013 or that the best players win a majority of the biggest points of all \u2013 it is still interesting to see the overall tournament averages and the extent to which the top names exceed the mean. Metrics include first (and second) serve points won on break point, how often a player holds serve from 0-15, service points won at 30-30 and deuce, and \u201cdecisive\u201d points won both on serve and return. Jannik Sinner\u2019s five-set progress<\/a> to the second round on Monday may have felt like more of a struggle than many anticipated, but he was well ahead of the tournament average in all the \u201cmental\u201d measurements.<\/p>\n Strawberries and cream are essential for some at Wimbledon but be prepared to wait. Photograph: James Marsh\/ShutterstockPlease queue here<\/p>\n No sporting event embraces the famous British affection for queueing quite like Wimbledon, and having survived The Queue\u2122 in Wimbledon Park, punters face queues to get into the outside courts, queues to see the players practising, and queues for strawberries and Pimm\u2019s. There is even queue-related reading material to pass the time while you\u2019re queueing: Ben Chatfield\u2019s Standing In Line: 30 years of obsessive queuing at Wimbledon, a page-turning mix of fan-lit and social history, is a must for every inveterate queuer at \u00a314.99 from the Wimbledon Shop (where the queue for the checkout needs to be seen to be believed).<\/p>\n Heaven scent<\/p>\n An early contender for the most quintessentially Wimbledon offering in the shop this year is the trio of scented candles \u2013 100% soya, of course \u2013 that will be perfuming middle-class living rooms in Britain and around the world in the months to come. The three scents are gin & tonic, strawberries & cream and fresh cut grass. Light them all at once, close your eyes and take a deep breath \u2013 and you\u2019ll be whisked straight back to SW19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Racket repairs \u2013 while you wait While thousands of fans shuffle around the grounds and soak up Wimbledon\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-770479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}