The best viewing points don't necessarily come with a specific gate, aisle, row and seat number. In Vantage Point, Wimbledon.com identifies the prime perches, observation points and court views that don’t require a ticket.
Court 12: Top of the new grandstand
There is a reason why private jets have larger windows than passenger planes and why penthouse apartments boast floor-to-ceiling wraparound terrace windows. It is to maximise the sense of exquisite, geographical superiority that comes from looking at the world in action from an elevated vantage point – a top-of-the-world feeling now open to all-comers who claim a spot in the top tier of the new no-reserve grandstand on Court 12.
Technically, the new seating provision on this mini stadium increases capacity from 1,056 to 1,736, but emotionally it adds a host of spectacular new dimensions to match viewing. To a court already known as a photographer’s favourite and the place you'd steer a Martian for a quick immersion into the all-round Wimbledon experience!
From this section of the stand, you see Court 12 as a picture-perfect composition laid out in front of you – a masterpiece of lines and symmetry, from the three acer trees that bound the northernmost side, which are aligned with military precision to the position taken by the three baseline officials… to the perfectly spaced hanging baskets that adorn the exterior of adjacent No.2 Court opposite. Those with an artistic eye will marvel at the pleasing aesthetics of the uniform presentation of the club colours of green and purple in court furniture and player accessories.
Towering high behind the umpire’s chair and curving around the baseline, the seats also provide an appealing train-set panorama of the southern courts with a City of London backdrop. If you look sharp left, you will also witness the throng of players’ family, friends and guests who lean over the balcony of the third floor of the Players’ Restaurant area to keep an eye on the various live contests. The perspective granted by Court 12’s new seating celebrates the togetherness of the tennis family gathered for The Championships.
Taking in the linear patchwork of the southern courts – Courts 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 - you can appreciate that each court, with its match in progress and attendant spectators, is a self-contained little world characterised by its own ebb and flow of sporting appreciation. Ooohs on one court; aaahs emanating from another; grunts over there, pierced by shrieks elsewhere.
On Monday, you would hear No.2 Court erupt in cheering and see the standing ovation as No.3 seed Karolina Pliskova won her first-round match against Zhu Lin Glancing down and to your left, you would observe at close quarters Ernests Gulbis’s frustration on Court 8 as he lost in straight sets to the Argentine Leonardo Mayer. Just as the North or South Pole creates the earth’s magnetic field, so the ivy-clad façade of the AELTC Clubhouse, with its Centre Court and No.1 Court scoreboards, conveys the flux of performance staged on the main show courts.
The Championships are contested in the spirit of those lines from Rudyard Kipling's If - "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same." Over at the top of the new stand on Court 12, however, it's the 18th-century poet William Cowper who holds sway - as his line "I am monarch of all I survey" brilliantly encapsulates spectator experience.