Royal Hush: The Queen Plays Wimbledon
The world of soccer gave us huge results. Tennis added an unending match for the ages and still the mere presence of a single, slighty doughty woman in a lovely blue outfit and bonnet trumped it all.
After all the Queen is still the Queen. Royalty transcends, Her Highness does captivates and knowing that Elizabeth would be visiting Wimbledon for the first time in 33 years, turned the usually sedate sanctuary into an unbridled hive of frenzy.
But why?
Maybe it’s the memory of power. Or perhaps it’s the sheer weight of time, 1100 years of unbroken Royal rule. Maybe it’s social psychology. Scholars remind us we are all tribal beings. Studies tell us that, simply for survival, we are hard wired for leaders who’ll resist whatever onslaught appears. Or maybe all this is just a matter of us being entwined in a celebrity obsessed world of wannabes and “C-listers” and by far the Queen is the world’s foremost and certainly most enduring celeb who delivers a gravitas and notoriety the most famous film star could only envy.
No wonder on an unusually warm Thursday morning, this London world of ivy walls and purple petunias is gripped with Liz fevor. Yes, there is some normalcy. Zealots in Spanish red “Espagna” tops or the Dutch in their orange “Nederland” T-shirts are here to root. But this is a day for the English – their traditions, their quirks, their Queen.
So the gambling parlors announced their odds on anything and everything royal from the color of the Queen’s dress to the 20-1 likelihood of a streaker while everything at the AELTC — the iconic ivy, the purple petunias, the plans for every move — was all set. After all, this is England and no one does pomp ‘n ceremony better than the Brits.
So everywhere a buzz excites. An aging solicitor from Cornwall asks his daughter, “can we go for tea up their?”
“No Dad,” the daughter scolds. “That’s off limits — just for Roger and the Queen.”
As for me, I presume the Queen will enter where all VIP’s do, by the Royal enclosure with its imposing Army guards in olive uniforms, its beautiful blonde woods and ten of the most important steps in tennis which leads you to the words poet Rudyard Kipling‘s advise you to do just one thing: to treat the two imposters of triumph and disaster as just the same.
But on this day, the Queen will forego the usual entry to make a grand circular entrance.
“There’s a vast sense of anticipation,” noted BBC. Giddy kitchen helpers stared out from the media restaurant. Photographers on a bridge over St. Mary’s walkway first joked that the Queen was “looking for her proper spot in the car park.”
While President Clinton once appeared at the U.S. Open with an 11-vehicle convey of security vehicles, the Queen’s appearance, while grand, had a certain restrained royalty to it. Arriving by herself in a small black limo with just modest outward securtity, she strolled by her adoring, deferential subjects. From the modestly verticle Henman Hill, to Court 18 where, 13 hours earlier Isner and Mahut had battled so bravely, to St. Mary’s walk, the still-spritely-after-all these years, 84-year-old (in a bright blue outfit with white accents and a matching old-school blue and white bonnet to kill for and only very modest jowls) offered her greeting to the masses, who sometimes crowded 14-deep. She chatted with eight-year old Kung Phimlee and ten-year old Alphie Fox of the Royal Tennis Initiative, spoke with officials and ambled down St. Mary’s walk where the crowds were elated.
She then went up to the Members Lawn just below the tea room where she greeted four young Brits and a selection of tennis icons. You know the names: Billie Jean, Martina, Rafa, Venus, Roddick, as well as the Serbs Djokovic and Jankovic. And there, at the very end of the dignified reception line was Serena offering an incredibly deep, well-practiced bow and Federer in a flawless suit, clasping his hands behind his back.
Then it was time for lunch in the clubhouse. Here, among others, Mirka and Roger Federer, Venus, Virginia Wade and Tim Henman joined the Queen for some Salmon Millefeuille with Wye Valley Asparagus, a main course of Orange and Honey Marinated Chicken with Fruity Couscous and some Kentish Strawberries and Blackberries with Cornish Clotted Cream and Mint Syrup. Yum-yum — British haute cuisine.
After this filling meal, officials got their fill of what they must have wanted. Instead of displaying one of the great charismatic characters of our game, authorities, of course, chose their placid home hero Andy Murray, who would be facing Finn Jarkko Nieminen. And so when the good Queen walked in, prompty on time, she got a pleasant reception, pleasant chatter and a pleasant straight set win delivered by her loyal subject Murray. Despite some fine winners from the Scot, Her Highness sat rather stiff and didn’t applaud until the end when in one zealous outburst she broke out with 50 claps in a row.
How emotional can you get?
Otherwise, with well-meaning but rather starchy officials by her side and Tim Henman and Virginia Wade behind her (and dare we be so politically correct as to note that there was just one person of color in the entire Royal Box) she took in her first Centre Court match in 33 years. Many rekindled
But on this day, their was one stately woman who everyone loved to love. And, as the famously insulated and perhaps lonely monarch pulled away from the Royal Entrance, alone in her limo, tennis watchers wondered whether the monarch, at 84, could possibly have a late blooming love affair with the grand and sometimes royal sport of lawn tennis.
Tags: Wimbledon
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