Wimbledon guests choosing wine over tennis

Corporate guests at Wimbledon are choosing to drink wine and eat steak and high tea rather than taking their seats on Centre Court it has been claimed.

There has been anger over the number of empty seats on the two main courts even during high profile games such as the women’s and men’s quarter-finals featuring players such as Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.

According to The Telegraph, Wimbledon workers say that a great many of the empty seats belong to corporate guests who would “rather quaff wine and eat steak than watch the matches”.

With many fans queuing for hours outside hoping to get tickets and many more left watching the action from “Henman Hill/Murray Mound”, the sight of blocks of 10-20 seats left empty while Murray and Roger Federer were playing was galling.

“Lunch often runs over onto pudding and once they’ve had quite a lot of steak and booze they don’t want to leave,” one worker told the Telegraph, while another said the hospitality area was “so busy” during Murray’s quarter-final against Canadian Vasek Pospisil.

One (unnamed) guest admitted: “I’m not really surprised, people here don’t necessarily come for the tennis, they are just here for the networking. They see tennis as a drop in drop out sort of thing.”

Those guests that do show up have perhaps enjoyed themselves too much.

Victoria Azarenka, who went against Williams in one of the women’s quarter-finals yesterday, complained that drunken laughter from the crowd was a distraction.

“I think they might have had a little too many Pimm’s or whatever,” she said.

“When people are drinking, every time the announcer says ‘Make sure you hydrate yourself’, I think he means with water, not alcohol.”