It was, everyone agreed, just about the perfect way to start a tennis tournament.
The ground staff, umpires, gardeners, cleaners, officials, ball boys, strawberry-servers and Pimm’s-pourers of the All England Club do what they can, of course, to lay on a decent knockabout every summer, but ultimately the power to deliver a dream Wimbledon is in the hands of higher powers, and yesterday they were beaming beatifically on London SW19.
As the gates of the club opened, there were bright blue skies overhead, dappled with storybook clouds. Tens of thousands of tennis fans fortunate enough to have tickets made their traditional dash to the best spots on Murray Mound, or ambled contentedly to their seats above the perfectly striped suede courts, pausing here and there for a glass of something chilled in the sunshine.
“It’s just bliss today, isn’t it?” said Championships regular Jane Smith, who had found a seat under a rose-trailed pagoda to sip Pimm’s from a can with her husband Peter.
“Hazy sunshine, not too hot, nice breeze ...” The couple from West Sussex bid for tickets through the public ballot every year without fail: a summer without Wimbledon, she explained, was “just not summer at all”.
On court, too, the tournament was delivering a faultless opening for British tennis, in the form of 21-year-old Liam Broady, on his Grand Slam singles debut, who made the most of his wildcard place to dispatch Marinko Matosevic in a thrilling contest in which he came back from two sets to love to squeeze out the former world No 39.
The victory over the Australian, ranked 43 places above him (Broady is currently No 181 in the world), “means everything”, he said after the match. “It’s my home tournament, I’ve had good success here, and it’s been a long road to finding myself in the main draw of a slam, and I couldn’t be happier.”
(Well might he be delighted: the £47,000 he will pocket even if he loses his next match is not far short of his entire career earnings to date of £62,795.)
Broady, the runner-up in 2011 in the boys’ singles at Wimbledon, and the current British No 6, has never before played in the main singles draw; the participation in this year’s tournament of his older sister Naomi, also thanks to a wildcard entry, makes them the first British siblings to compete in the men’s and women’s draw since Buster and Linda Mottram in 1978.
“What an amazing Grand Slam debut for him,” said his 25-year-old sister. “This will mean a huge amount for Liam. Just competing like he did in the first two sets, never mind coming back and going on to win. It’s amazing.”
But even for the delighted Broady junior, the perfect day wasn’t quite all it appeared. He has been estranged from his father Simon for three years, since the player opted to join the LTA’s coaching programme and accept its financial support.
Simon Broady vowed to have nothing to do with the governing body of British tennis after his daughter, then 18, was stripped of her LTA funding in 2007 after posting several indiscreet photographs on the social network Bebo.
While his son was on court, Simon Broady was at the Aorangi practice courts elsewhere in the grounds with Naomi, whom he coaches. She dashed over to court 18 to catch her brother as he left the court; her father stayed put.
His father, Liam Broady said pointedly in his post-match press conference, had “not even popped into [his] head” since his victory, “but it was fantastic to have my sister there and the rest of my family watching. What makes it more special is being able to share such a moment that I’ll remember for the rest of my life with so many people that I love.”
Was there any chance the result could lead to a reconciliation? “I doubt it.”
Asked if the win had vindicated his decision to take the LTA funding, he said: “It was always the right decision for me whether I got the results or not.” (“Broadys,” he has noted previously, “can be pretty stubborn.”)
Other complications, too, intruded on the idyllic scene inside the gates of the All England Club, most notably the heightened security threat in the wake of the Tunisian shootings.
Security arrangements at the club, always very thorough, have been tightened further, with extra uniformed and plainclothes officers deployed around the grounds, and some additional road closures in place, according to the Metropolitan police.
While the police and security presence was undoubtedly visible, it was discreet, with most tournament regulars saying they had noticed little change on previous years.
One innovation for 2015, however, is an explicit instruction to the 840 private security staff deployed each day to stop anyone entering in possession of either a drone or a selfie stick, the extendable devices used to hold cameraphones to take self-portraits.
The ban on flying cameras, often used for surveillance, follows an incident on Saturday when police seized a drone that was being flown close to the grounds.
Less explicit is the reason why selfie sticks have been outlawed and consigned to the list of proscribed objects that includes knives, oversized flags, vacuum flasks and vuvuzelas.
Perhaps there was a fear that the gadgets might generally lower the tone. But trying to banish coarseness from the tournament would be an uphill battle.
The top seed Serena Williams, during her opening victory over the Russian Margarita Gasparyan, was rebuked with a code violation – a verbal warning – thanks to an “audible obscenity”.
Liam Broady, too, was censured for a foulmouthed outburst in his match against Matosevic, while Australia’s Nick Kyrgios insisted that his use of the phrase “dirty scum” following an ill-tempered exchange with the umpire in his opening match had been about himself, and not the official.
Broady, at least, was happy to accept he had done wrong. “Being from Manchester and 21, my friends ... you know, people swear. But it’s not right to do it, obviously, in front of a couple of thousand people, especially when there are young kids in the audience.”
He will have a chance to apply the lesson at his second ever men’s singles appearance, against Belgian David Goffin, the No 16 seed, on Wednesday 1 July.
