Wat Wimbledon

The museum brings back the historic match.

As soon as the championships end, the hallowed grounds of the All England Lawn Tennis Club reopen for the fans who never managed to get a ticket or are just arriving in town.

All the beautiful green grass is covered up, so no point bringing your racquet, but the place still thrums with magic.

The view from Henman Hill is indeed impressive, just as it looks on the broadcasts, when there are throngs of people watching the action on a giant television screen.

And then along comes the man this mountain is named for, the handsome former British No 1 Tim Henman. It's not like he's here greeting every twicedaily tour, so this is a genuine treat.

If you don't get to meet the hero who came so close to giving Britain its first Wimbledon trophy in many decades, there's plenty of compensation elsewhere on the site, and many other greats to be worshiped in the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.

Book early for a tour and be here on time. Knowledgeable Blue Badge guides show you all around, including the normally restricted areas, like the BBC television studio and the room where the players give post-match interviews.

What began with a bit of casual competition in 1877 has long since become the planet's premier Grand Slam.

Henman Hill isn't its real name, says our guide, Mary, pointing to the sign saying "Aorangi Terrace". But when Tim was showing maximum pluck on court and the locals outside the stadium were going wild, spilling their strawberries and cream, a BBC commentator decided "Henman Hill" was a fairer description than an obscure allusion to Kiwi rugby.

"The fans don't have to be as well-behaved here as those watching from courtside," says Mary with a wink. "This year they drank 200,000 glasses of lager and ate 35,000 kilos of strawberries."

There are toilets everywhere around the grounds, but Mary cautions us that they only function during the tournament. We have to hold on until we reach the museum and cafe.

At Gate 3 there's a racket of a different sort. They're rebuilding Centre Court, complete with a roof that will kill off the Wimbledon tradition of rain-delayed matches, at least on the premier grass.

When the sport's big guns stream back to London next June, the new shield will be ready to zip into place in 10 minutes, and still let in the light thanks to its translucency.

We have a look at Court 1, where Rafael Nadal, the king of clay, so recently laid his claim to Roger Federer's mossy crown. It's a little disappointing see the fussily manicured grass sheathed, but it has to be pristine again when Wimbledon hosts a Davis Cup tie in September - Britain versus Austria.

Maintaining the lawns is a vaunted, year-round job for eight men and their tonne of grass seed, a Thames' worth of water and a pair of scissors to crop their harvest to eight millimetres' height, no more, no less.

The ground has to be hard enough to withstand Andy Roddick's rocket serves for 13 consecutive days - assuming he lasts that long, and if he doesn't there's another heavy hitter waiting.

"Grass is for cows," former world No 1 Ivan Lendl said in 1982 after yet another Wimbledon failure. Nadal had reservations about the surface too, but he's changed his mind now.

The Millennium Building, opened in 2000, occupies the former site of Court 1. It's where the club's members get to hang out with the players and tolerate the press during the championships.

Before the tennis club moved here in 1922, the land was used to grow lavender commercially, says Mary, "and that's perhaps why purple was adopted as the club's colour".

Inside the Millennium Building are the newsmedia facilities, including the theatre where the players explain what went wrong to reporters, plus a gymnasium and dressing rooms - members only, please.

That's what it says on the door, but it doesn't stop us, with Mary leading the charge through.

Suddenly we're breathing the rarefied air reserved for the highbrow members of the All England Club and their "honorary" associates - the present and past singles champions - and the "temporary" members, meaning the active players.

Even the members are restricted to a pair of tickets to the championships per day, though they get great seats. The most coveted seats of all, of course, are in the Royal Box, where the House of Windsor allows the occasional pop singer to be feted by the club chairman.

Wimbledon - the village, not the tournament - is a pretty spot with posh homes, many of whose owners rent out accommodation to the top players each June for as much as 30,000 pounds.

The folks who once put up three-time former champion Boris Becker for a fortnight were nicely rewarded: They got to holiday at his luxury apartment in Monte Carlo.

Someone as high up in the rankings as Becker used to be no doubt has a chauffeur on call, but plenty of Wimbledon contenders can be spotted around the village during the championships.

Just loiter in one of the many pubs and restaurants. One of them is bound to come in ready to celebrate - or in need of some consoling.