"Excuse me, sir , but in five minutes we'll have to ask you to move your feet over the line, because there's going to be another queue with a lot of people." Without batting an eyelid, the boy lying on the blanket shifts his legs and continues watching a match on his cell phone. Order and discipline: there's no other way to keep thirteen, maybe fifteen thousand people queuing for hours on a lawn, and luckily at Wimbledon Park they know how. It's not just any queue, it's "The Queue," an institution that at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in early July rivals strawberries and cream, if not the famous predominantly white dress code dating back to 1880.

How a tail is born

There are several ways to get into Wimbledon, and perhaps being a player isn't the most complicated. The most expensive is certainly buying season tickets for the main courts, which are stadiums: covered (Centre Court and No. 1) or, like No. 2, not. If you shell out a few thousand pounds to secure a reserved seat overlooking the most exclusive stage in world tennis, you can take it easy and even take care of your appearance, wearing a dress or (for women) a sheath dress and sandals. But if you don't want to or can't, and if you're not participating in the tournament, you have only one option: arm yourself with patience and head to the lawn, where about twenty white numbered lines (from K1 onwards) establish priority to purchase the £33 Ground Ticket. With one caveat: you have to be prepared for (almost) anything.

In a tent

The first lines form at 8 a.m. the day before. They're fanatics who arrive under awnings and try to be among the first 500 to purchase, in addition to the general admission ticket for the 15 unnumbered pitches, one for one of the three stadiums: 105 pounds for the central pitch, 90 pounds for pitch 1, and 55 pounds for pitch 2. Because when you arrive on the pitch, you're guided to your position in the static queue and given a numbered card. That number tells you who you are and what your chances of getting into the important pitches are, perhaps through , that is, buying up seats left vacant by those who tire and go home. Let's get down to business: we arrive at 4:10 a.m. (it's already light) and are given number 2970. The wait begins.