THE queue had started to form late on Monday night to see the new British hero, Tim Henman, play in this afternoon's quarter-finals; a dozen or so tents on the side of the road, packed with prosperous-looking students weighed down with raybans, sunblock and baseball caps for protection.
By last night, at least they knew who the Briton would face. Todd Martin completed a straightforward win over Thomas Johansson in four sets.
But with the way the rest of the fourth round matches went on the show courts, it's hard hats rather than suncream that really ought to be required for admission to the All England Club this morning.
Pete Sampras, the top seeded big server, made sure of his place in the last eight by beating Cedric Pioline in a surprisingly one-sided match that never came to life. And Alex Radulescu, the Romanian-born German who has out-aced all of the big names over the past week or so, ensured that Neville Goodwin's survival of what should have been a third round exit to Boris Becker represented a very short-term, if reasonably lucrative, gain.
"I think I'm dreaming and I hope that nobody wakes me up," laughed the delighted 21-year-old after what had been a remarkably convincing defeat of the South African. Goodwin said simply: "Nobody has ever played that good against me."
Radulescu had made a bit of a habit of getting stuck into marathons prior to yesterday, with each of his first three matches going to five sets and lasting well over three hours. But this was a very different story with Goodwin unable to cope with the German's scorching serve and not getting enough of his own first efforts in to make a contest of it.
In the end, the qualifier lost 6-3, 6-0, 6-4 against a powerful right-hander who looked comfortable at either net or baseline and whose occasional backhand passes were magnificent.
Radulescu's reward is a quarter-final tie with Malivai Washington, who survived a minor injury yesterday to come though against Paul Haarhuis of the Netherlands in three.
Sampras, meanwhile, will face another Dutchman, Richard Krajicek, shortly after lunch, following the 24-year-old's surprise win over 1991 champion Michael Stich.
The German had made much last week of his return to form since putting a lengthy spell of injury behind him, and of how his game was no longer so dependent on his big serve. Around these parts, though, he could have done with being more rather than less dependent on his serve for, short of playing with a sponge, there is precious little opportunity to try anything else in matches like this.
"I was trying to fight, I kept hanging on to the whole match, I didn't give up. But I wasn't playing the way I wanted to," said the former world number two after what had been a very disappointing display.
The first set was a spectacularly dull affair which seemed certain to go to a tiebreak until the German lost his concentration at 4-5 and allowed his opponent to steal the first break of the afternoon.
The second did go to a tiebreak which, had Stich won it, might have paved a way back into the match. In the third set the only statistic that mattered was that he broke twice to the one game against serve that he managed. It too went 6-4 in favour of the man with the distinction of being a 17th seed, who has now made up for a couple of disappointing visits in recent years.
Another man with a crunching serve carving a future out for himself at Wimbledon just what the event so desperately needed.
Sampras summed it all up nicely earlier in the day when he had said that it mattered little which of the pair came through to face him in the quarters. "It's a pretty straight forward match either way, he admitted. "There's no big strategy against guys like these. It all comes down to a couple of points and that's about it."
