Wimbledon on a budget: the Queue

Leave the tent at home. Get to Wimbledon Park at dawn, buy a grounds pass, and keep your phone charged for three o’clock. That’s the whole plan, and it gets you onto the outside courts all day, and, with a little luck, onto Centre Court by teatime, for about the price of a decent pub lunch.

Wimbledon still sells tickets to people who simply turn up, and naturally it does so via a queue. Not a queue. The Queue. It winds across the park every morning of the Championships, and everyone in it is handed a numbered, dated Queue Card. Your number is your place, your proof and your passport to the gate. Treat it like a passport.

The romantic option

The overnighters are there for the show courts. A limited number of Centre Court and No.2 Court seats go through the Queue on the first ten days, and No.1 Court seats every day. So people pitch two-person tents in the park the evening before, under rules any boarding school would recognise: no gazebos, no barbecues, music off by ten, one of you in the tent at all times. The stewards wake the field between 5.30 and 6, tents come down, bags go to left luggage. It’s cold, faintly damp, oddly convivial, and you will dine out on it for years.

It’s also a great deal of night for a seat that isn’t guaranteed. And in the final four days, Centre Court isn’t sold at the gate at all.

The sensible option

Arrive at first light and set your heart on a grounds pass. It isn’t the consolation prize people assume. It puts you on the outside courts, close enough to hear the players’ shoes squeak on the grass, and into the unreserved seats on No.3 Court, Court 12 and Court 18. It’s the cheapest ticket the Queue sells, and it gets cheaper still in the second week.

The trick

Now, the part most of the Queue never hears about. From 3 pm, resale tickets for Centre Court, No.1 and No.2 Court can come up through the official resale service, for less than you paid for your grounds pass, via a virtual queue in the Wimbledon app. Sign up in the Queue Village once you’ve bought your grounds pass, and a text tells you if you’re in. Late afternoon on Centre Court, on a grounds-pass budget. Quite.

Before you set off

Whoever’s paying needs a myWIMBLEDON ID, so set it up the night before, and bring photo ID as well. Travel light: bags over 40 by 30 by 30 cm won’t get through. And don’t wander off. You can leave the Queue for half an hour at most, and the card must stay with you.

So: no tent, an early alarm, and a charged phone at three. The cheapest seat at Wimbledon is still a seat at Wimbledon, and occasionally it’s a very good one.