Strawberries and Cream

We've been watching quite a lot of tennis this year. Pretty glued to the French Open and then Wimbledon, so when we heard that the GB v Luxemburg Davis Cup tie was being held in Glasgow we decided to go along. Unfortunetly it seems a lot of other people also had that idea and by the time we got round to booking tickets there were only a few left for the middle day when the doubles was on. (Davis Cup runs like this - two singles days on day one, a doubles match on day two and then two singles matches on day three.)

Going to watch the doubles match on the Saturday was actually quite good as the Murray brothers were teaming up for the first time. On the Friday night Murray A had ripped apart his opponent 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 so the odds were it was not going to be a close match and that was how it turned out with the Murrays winning pretty comfortably.

 

It was a really fun event but unsurprisingly bore little in common with Wimbledon apart from there being a net, a court and some players hitting a little yellow ball.
Where the Londoners have Pims, stripey blazers and strawberries with cream, we had Irn-Bru, baggy t-shirts and some not very tasty nachos with congelled cheese dip. (Knew I should have gone for the hotdog.) Where Wimbeldon has respectable clapping between points, we had a large group of people in identical t-shirts with a host of prepared routines, shouting out such things as "Ooooh, Oooooh Murrays on Fiiire" and "Forehand, backhand, Ace, Ace, Ace". The Murray brothers and the rest of team GB seemed to be really enjoying this, it must be quite a pleasent change from the quiet tones of the Grandslams to be allowed a bit of banter and fun with the audience. Not so sure the Lux guys would agree though, might have been getting slightly put off by the slow hand clapping, the chants of "Who stole your Milky Bars?" (to the young blonde player) and the funniest and cheekiest chant of the day "One more than yesterday, one more than yesterday" when the Lux players got their first game on the board.
The other major difference from Braehead to Wimbeldon was the entertainment. While London once famously had Sir Cliff to "entertain" during breaks in play we had short blasts of Scottish rock and pop from the Proclaimers to Glasvegas and the rather odd sight of a couple dressed in silver sequend outfits dancing around playing electronic violin covers of rock songs. We only caught the last few moments of their performance and it was a pretty startling and unsettling thing to walk into the arena and discover.

All in all though I'd highly reccomend it for a wee day out and with Andy Murray on top form after his great win in Cinncinati its the perfect time to give it a go. The event was so popular with everyone that they are doing it all again with the end of season playoff match against Hungary 16-18 September again at Braehead Arena. If you want tickets then go here. Remember though that the actual players in each match can shift around and that following the US Open Andy might be exhausted (hopefully from winning the event) so there's a possiblity he might not be taking part.