Excerpt from my book to come later...Wimbledon!!

Wimbledon- The Grass is not all that green!!!
If you ask any player, they will have fond memories of their wins in tournaments even if it is in some obscure village. My thoughts on Wimbledon may be a bit muddled because I never had great results there. However,I just want to lay down some facts you may have never heard about Wimbledon.
I have played Wimbeldon twice as a junior,5 -6 years in womens’s event both as a qualifier and as a main draw player and later on as part of the media when I was a commentator.
As a junior, I was overawed by the entire club, its facilities, its traditions and of course watching some of my heroes up close and personal. I was in the salon once with shampoo all over my hair when Pete Sampras came in for a haircut. I pleaded with my stylist to please remove all that mess from my hair, so I didn’t look like a clown!!
Then came my years as a qualifier. For those who don’t know what that means, qualifiers are those who don’t have a direct entry into the main draw of Wimbledon.Main draw is usually the top 108 players as per ranking and the next 100 or so players will need to qualify through 3 rounds to gain an entry into the main draw.
Wimbledon’s qualifying rounds are not held in The All England Club. They are held in the Police Grounds at Roehampton which are a few miles away. Qualifiers who lose at Roehampton never even got to see Wimbledon even though they were actually playing the same tournament.
I also definitely need to take a dig at the hierarchical way they divided up the locker rooms. In no other Grand Slam was a locker room divided up by the top 8 seeds, followed by the next rung of seeds and so on. The All England club definitely didn’t care about being politically correct, that’s for sure!!
Wimbledon was in lot of scrutiny and finally became the last Grand Slam to offered equal prize money for men and women in 2007. US Open offered equal prize money starting in 1973!!!
I forget the year when this incident happened. I had lost in the final round of qualifying and had gone to Wimbledon to collect my prize money. The treasurer gave my check and said the official transport desk would take me to the bank up hill. My bags were ready and I lugged them on to the transport desk. When I went there, the liason looked at my badge that said qualifier and said” sorry – but we don’t provide transport for qualifiers”. I explained to him the treasurer told me so and the bank was just a mile away, but he said”Rules are rules,Maam”. I was pondering how I was going to carry my bags uphill to the bank when a bodyguard of Goran Ivanisevic barged in. He told the liason that he needed to go to central London. I knew that as per RULES that a coach,bodyguard or spouse could never get official transport on their own and had to be travelling with the player. Goran wasn’t there. But the same liason scurried and said"Yes sir-yes sir,right away,Sir.This way-sir”. I thought to myself “ what the hell””?? I can say that it was one of the lowest moments of my life.
I played in the main draw a few years later. All the wonderful treatment including free musical tickets, transport to wherever I wanted to go, didn’t flinch me one bit. My perspective was intact.

Even as a commentator which was the by the way, the best experience of Wimbledon overall, I took it always with a pinch of salt.
It was also here that I had a mini-tiff with Steffi Graf on the practice courts. She is the greatest woman player of all time, in my opinion. But that is for another day…….