Wimbledon

: The Grand Account :

For two weeks each summer, a quiet corner of south-west London becomes the most exclusive village in sport. The Championships have been contested on these lawns since 1877, and the All England Club has spent the intervening century and a half perfecting the art of understatement: ivy on the walls, dark green and purple everywhere, not an advertising hoarding in sight. Royalty watches from the Royal Box as it has for generations; the Centre Court crowd still falls properly silent before a second serve. Nothing here is loud, and nothing is hurried. It is the only great sporting occasion on earth whose prevailing aesthetic is restraint, which is precisely why the discerning return every June.

From Mayfair, the journey to SW19 takes forty-five minutes when handled intelligently, across the Thames at Putney, then through the quiet residential rises toward Wimbledon Village, sidestepping the A3's tournament congestion entirely. The Range Rover LWB is the natural choice: commanding on Church Road, composed in the village's narrow lanes. Your chauffeur will have studied the order of play and the club's vehicle protocols; he carries chilled water and a pressed umbrella regardless of the forecast, and he knows precisely where to wait on Somerset Road so that departure takes ninety seconds rather than forty minutes. When rain suspends play, the car becomes a drawing room until the covers come off.

Arrive by eleven, while the grounds are still at their best. Lunch early in the debenture lounges before the one-thirty start on Centre Court; strawberries are obligatory and best taken without irony. Between matches, walk the outside courts, world-class tennis ten feet away is its own privilege. As the evening session begins, slip up the hill to Wimbledon Village: an aperitif at the Dog & Fox, or dinner at The White Onion on the High Street. The second Saturday and Sunday demand the full ritual; the first Friday belongs to connoisseurs. Whatever the scoreboard says, leave a game before the crowds do. Your car will already be waiting.