The technology ruining Wimbledon has nothing to do with line judges

Telegraph

08-07-2025

Each year in mid-May, I get an extraordinary number of breezy phone calls from assorted Midlands 'ladies who lunch' and long-lost great nephews.
Although most have maintained radio silence for the previous 12 months, and can barely remember our kids' names, they enquire earnestly after my health then manoeuvre the conversation round to the throwaway line: 'By the way, do you happen to have any Wimbledon tickets going spare?'
Being lucky enough, as a member of the All England Club to be able to buy some tickets to the Championships each year without entering the ballot, I quite understand their belated enthusiasm to reconnect (even though our invitation to their exclusive garden party for 'le tout Warwickshire' unaccountably appears to have gone astray).
In fact, most of my quota will have been spoken for several months earlier, sprinkled among various tennis-mad godchildren and the closest of old friends.
'Old' in this case reflects the fact that most are both long-standing mates and long in the tooth: with a husband in his 80s, few of our best buddies clock in at much below three-score years and 10. And the age factor became a particular conundrum when electronic ticketing was first introduced immediately post-Covid in 2021, with the limited numbers of fans allowed into the ground in that confusing era being assigned mobile e-tickets.
At the time I, as a paid-up Luddite, was deeply suspicious of anything involving apps, QR codes, e-tickets or e-anything for that matter, and as the Champs approached I embraced full panic mode.
Growing numbers of our elderly guests, most with venerable mobiles resembling large house bricks, began ringing me sheepishly to confess. 'Nigel's car phone doesn't seem to know anything about e-tickets. How on earth are we going to get in?'
I gave it a go myself, but my retro Android was as reluctant as its owner to succumb to 'modern life'. Oh, for the services of some moderately capable digital native – or even an intelligent six-year-old.
I had never felt so reactionary and pathetically out of touch, descending into paranoia over the possibility of deleting my treasured stash of Centre Court tickets with one ill-starred flick of the finger.
Eventually, I gave up trying to master the state-of-the-art technology, which seemed too clever by half and certainly too clever for me, and dissolved into performatively noisy tears down the line to the ticket office. The merciful lady at the other end clucked sympathetically. I was evidently not the only one under the cosh with unaccustomed tech.
'Tell you what. I'll send you out the tickets in paper form.' Eureka! The paper tickets duly arrived and amid the occasional glitches of day one, when numerous unwary punters pitched up with phones out of battery, or the whole system briefly went haywire through the sheer weight of numbers trying to use it, our gang felt distinctly smug.
No worries about servers crashing or phones giving up the ghost. We happily swapped in and out of the show courts, on our flexible paper tickets, grateful to be part of a tendency unspoilt by progress.
Although now well capable of mastering the intricacies of the electronic system, I'm afraid we still favour the traditional method of access to tennis's holiest shrine. And despite the proven efficiency of e-ticketing and the club's preference for everyone to use it, there is an alternative, both for members and the public.
Paper tickets are still available for us old dolts, or 'people who need additional support', as the club kindly refers to them, and those who don't own a mobile phone. If they contact the ticket office to explain their plight, they too can enjoy a day at Wimbledon.
No wonder so many tennis aficionados claim that, if the All England's board were running the country, we'd all have a smile on our face.