The Wimbledon Queue: Where friendships are formed and sometimes even love is found

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WIMBLEDON PARK, ENGLAND — By 8:30 a.m. Monday, there was already over 10,000 people forming an orderly queue for a chance to purchase tickets for the opening day of Wimbledon. Almost 3,000 of them had camped overnight.

Among them was London-based fitness instructor Bea Knight and lawyer Sebastian de Boer. After connecting on dating app Hinge, the pair met for the first time last Thursday and decided to embark on a unique second date.

“He has been messaging me about a second date and I said I wanted to go to Wimbledon but didn’t have a ticket this year. And he was, like, I will take you to Wimbledon. How about a 28-hour second date?” Knight, 24, laughed.

Knight and de Boer were part of a group creeping ever forward after a 5:09 a.m. wake-up call from the on-site stewards. On an average day, Wimbledon Park is a short walk from the All England Club, but today, the promised land where the queue nears its end is at least five hours away.

Finding community, friendship and, maybe, even love in the queue is nothing new.

Three years ago, Georgia Mainwaring, from Christchurch, New Zealand, was spending three months traveling around the United Kingdom. One of the top items on her itinerary was to join the Wimbledon queue — or The Queue, as the signs in these parts call it. 

“I came on my own with my book and a tent. Opposite me was this group of eight guys who were very friendly,” Mainwaring said while seated around a laptop watching Canada score a stoppage-time winner against South Africa in the men’s soccer World Cup Sunday evening.

Among the group was Billy Hearn. “It was very intimidating being on your own having eight of them there but, anyway, they invited me for a beer,” she said. “We all sat around that evening and had a lovely time. And then me and Billy kept in touch and decided to come to Wimbledon together the next year and our love story started.”

The first 500 people in the queue on each of the first 10 days can purchase tickets for the show grounds. (Henry Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images)

Some fans come to the queue to see just one famous name. Bobby Sandhu, who arrived at 6.30 p.m. Sunday, moved his tent to the queue for Tuesday’s action. The 30-year-old from Brixton in south London was camping for two nights to ensure he got to see his idol Serena Williams’ return to Centre Court.

The first 500 people in the queue on each of the first 10 days can purchase tickets for the show courts, Centre Court, No. 1 Court and No. 2 Court. The queue may be an opportunity to find love, but it also offers the rare chance to buy on-the-day tickets for one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

A little like the first baby born after midnight on New Year’s Eve, the first person in the queue becomes a local celebrity. Last year, Welsh grandparents Vicky and Nigel Broad took the title. This year, Florence Chan got to the park at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, just over six hours before the queue officially opened, to capture the No.1 queue card.

Arriving in southwest London following a 14-hour flight from Bangkok, Thailand, the 55-year-old retiree from Hong Kong did not expect to be the first in line. “Being No. 1, it doesn’t matter to me,” Chan says. “The only thing I want is to have a selfie with Djokovic.”

Some are queuing for the first time. Some have all of the equipment, others have very little. One couple slept on the grass with umbrellas over their heads and just two thin blankets for cover on what turned out to be a cooler night than expected following a London heatwave where temperatures soared to 95 degrees.

Jack Robinson, a former college tennis player, traveled from New Orleans to be at Wimbledon during a family trip to Europe. He came without a tent, a decision he regretted when the temperature plummeted to a damp, cold 55 degrees at around 4 a.m.

Being in the queue is exhausting. But Matt Warden from Salisbury, a city around 80 miles southwest of London, takes pride in having fallen asleep on Centre Court multiple times. He will never let tiredness deter him.

“Even if you don’t know loads about tennis, it’s such an experience,” he said. “You don’t get this anywhere else. You can’t do this in Australia or America or at the French Open. It’s like festival-style camping but without the festival craziness.”

What is not often talked about is the queues within the queues: for coffee, for the toilet, to stow away camping equipment in the luggage lock-up. This is a test of character, a test of resolve.

Victoria Petersonova queued for 90 minutes at a luggage storage unit before being turned away. So the 29-year-old from Greece traipsed through with her suitcase to the queuing village, an area where queuers can purchase refreshments and watch tennis on a big screen until the ground opens at 10 a.m. And, crucially, where there’s another luggage lock-up.

Thousands of people queued to enter Wimbledon on the opening day. (Photo by James Fearn / Getty Images)

Queuing will never not feel British. Volunteers and staff along the route, as well as the people in the thick of it, make the experience more bearable.

“Scrap the hay fever. It’s Wimbledon fever,” said content creator Harriet Fisher, who spent some time Sunday interviewing queuers. “Everyone’s looking out for each other, everyone’s happy, everyone’s positive. We saw people sharing food and watching others’ belongings.

“This just feels unique and special. It’s happy and joyful, and there are people from all over the world in this queue.”

Not everyone in tennis shares this view.

On Sunday night, two northwest Londoners, Keren Brown and Carol Baptiste, bonded over country music with Texan John Heard. “Amazing things can happen in the Wimbledon queue,” Brown said.

A couple of years ago, Heard and his wife came to Wimbledon to celebrate his 60th birthday and paid for “fancy tickets” on Centre Court.

“I met this guy in there and he said the real fans don’t do these tickets, the real fans do the queue. I was like, ‘What’s the queue?’ He explained it to me so, later that week, my wife and I were still in London and I said, I’m gonna go queue tonight,’” Heard said. “I literally grabbed a towel from my hotel room and that was it. I have committed that, for the rest of my life, I’m going to come every year.”

For many, queuing for Wimbledon is an exhausting but rewarding experience. (Henry Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images)

At Wimbledon Park there’s a lake. Early Monday morning birds are on it chirping. For sleep-deprived queuers, they sound like barking dogs. But across the water, toward the finish line, a golden clock surrounded by ivy on the side of Centre Court is just about visible as the sun rises.

“I can’t remember not queuing,” de Boer said.