A round-up of other Wimbledon news in brief

Haikus mark epic battle

THE RESIDENT Wimbledon poet Matt Harvey invited Haiku poems to be tweeted to him following the record-breaking match between John Isner and Nick Mahut.

Haiku are short verses that need not rhyme. There are five syllables in the first sentence, seven in the second and five again in the last:

“Isner and Mahut

Summer hats now off to you

Wish you both went through.”

Or

“When does a great sport

Become a sadistic sport?

What just happened here?”

Stanley just one in a million

WHATEVER YOU think about tennis, the institution of Wimbledon continues to be a big draw. Apart from handing £30 million each year to English tennis, the championships attract over 30,000 people every day to the south London venue.

But it fell to a South African yesterday to pick up the one millionth numbered queue card.

Rose Stanley joined the queue at 2.40pm on day seven just outside the golf course across the road from the famous grounds. It has taken seven years for that number to come up since they ticketing format was changed in 2003.

No, she didn’t win a prize.

Play halted by 11pm curfew

THERE HAS been a lot of debate this week about the roof. Last year it was closed when it rained.

But with no matches postponed this year because of bad weather, it was used to screen the Royal Box – and to be fair the punters too – from the sun, which often took the court temperature to well above 30 degrees.

Officials at the All England Club have put a curfew on using the roof late at night and there will be no midnight starts as they have in the US and Australia Opens.

Because the noisy air coolers for Centre Court are located in car park three, which is close to local houses, the club have decided to stop play at 11pm. Not unless a match is poised at 4-4 in the final set will they contemplate breaking the time limit.

Ireland set to face Lithuania

IRELAND PLAY Lithuania in the second round of the Euro/Africa Zone Group II next weekend from the 9th-11 th July at Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club as part of a sequence of Irish tennis weeks.

The Men’s Irish Open also returns this year to Fitzwilliam as part of the ITF Futures circuit. Normally, a Federation would have to run two Futures events to achieve sanction but, because of economic pressures, Tennis Ireland teamed up with Tennis Europe and the LTA to slot into the British futures sequence.

The Irish event is placed in the middle of the string of competitions: GB Frinton 12th July, Fitzwilliam 19th July and GB Chiswick 26th July.