the blog of balance performance physiotherapy

Rafael Nadal has not been able to defend his title at the Queen’s Club due to an ongoing knee problem.

Nadal, who lost his unbeaten record in the French Open, was due to defend his title at the AEGON Championships before returning to Wimbledon for the third grand slam of the year.

However, the world number one was advised by his doctors to rest in order to ensure he is fit enough to defend his Wimbledon title.

Although it received less press coverage the good news is that Graham Anderson from Balance Performance Physiotherapy has been making his Queens Club debut. Graham has been enjoying the tournament being busy with a heap of tennis injuries, doing tapes and warm ups prior to play and working on recovery stretching with players once their matches are over. He is working with a great team of ATP Trainers who travel to the multitude of events on the ATP World Tour.

Its turned out to be far more than just a warm up to the work he and Jonathan Lewis have to do at the AELTC Wimbledon Championships 2009! Obviously although Graham and Jonathan have been known to hold a tennis racket before, their role will be one of Chartered Physiotherapist and masseurs to the mens players at both tournaments. Hans Ektvedt, as many will remember, used to be part of the Balance Team and we have the chance to catch up with him as he is responsible for the Wimbledon Junior Championships physiotherapy.

It’s a long day working at these events.9am til 9pm at Queens and 10 am til the last player leaves (often 11pm) at the All England Club. There’s often a steady stream of male players awaiting treatment from the physios in the locker rooms. Work obviously lessens as the players one by one go out of the competition. Work is particularly busy during the heavy rain sessions when players look to the guys to help with all those niggles and injuries they otherwise don’t find time to treat. Let’s hope we won’t be facing any this year – although already it’s a wet start to Queens. The roof at Wimbledon will ensure full TV coverage this year but may not entirely help the work load of Jonathan and Graham. No complete days have been lost to rain at Wimbledon since 2004, when two days were a washout. Matches interrupted by bad light late in the day will be able to finish once the roof is closed and the lights switched on, meaning night tennis at Wimbledon is likely this year.

Graham says “It’s an honour to be part of history here”. Any time Wimbledon breaks with its tradition its good that Balance is able to join in with the celebration. This will be Jonathan Lewis’s 9th year at the AELTC.

Wimbledon. To a tennis fan, the word sums up all that’s wonderful about the game.

A nice thing about the championship tournament at Wimbledon is that it’s one of the few major sporting events for which the average fan (neither rich nor well-connected) stands a decent chance of gaining entry.

As far as for next year the simplest procedure is to enter the public ballot that is held for some of the Centre Court and No. 1 Court seats. You will need some luck to score a ticket this way, but it’s worth a try. To enter the ballot, send a request for an application form, along with a self-addressed envelope to: All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, Box 98, Church Road, Wimbledon SW19 5AE England. You should enclose an international reply coupon, which you can purchase at your local post office, to cover the cost of return postage.

By the way, your request for an application must be postmarked by December 15th and the application itself must be returned by December 31st of the year prior to the tournament.

The draw is held in January. If you are successful, you will be notified in February and asked to send payment at that time.

http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/tickets/publicballot.html has more details.

For those who would like to see a different side of tennis to the green grass and white kit of Wimbledon there is the London 2009 – Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, being held at the O2 in November.