LONDON — It was the middle of the afternoon at The All England Lawn Tennis Club, and Roger Federer was in the house.
So was Victoria Azarenka, the No. 1-ranked female tennis player in the world, as well as former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki, sporting her new Danish red shoes.You can’t buy a ticket to Wimbledon’s Olympic tennis events, we were told.Yet, as Federer prepared to serve, a few empty rows of seats hovered over his right shoulder. Same for Azarenka.And by the time Wozniacki got onto Centre Court for her second-round match with Yanina Wickmayer, rows of vacant seats were in every corner of the famed Wimbledon grandstand.They couldn’t all be outside, having tea. Could they?No, but stop tsk-tsking the British. It isn’t them that are failing to show up for Olympic events in conspicuous numbers.On the contrary. They want in. They’re at the gates, it seems, and as the handmade sign says, they want two. Or one. Or whatever you’ve got.Even Prime Minister David Cameron got his nose into the fray Monday, noting the no-show tickets problem and saying, “We can do better.”Or can we?As the British PM probably has learned by now, an increasing number of Olympic tickets has been going to sponsors ever since the Games embraced its new economic model post-Los Angeles in 1984. At every high-profile event at these Olympics, you’re likely to see some fresh-faced volunteer shepherding a group and holding a placard aloft that reads, “Visa” or “P&G” or, because it’s the Games’ 900-pound gorilla, “NBC.”Sponsors and network TV rights-holders pay for the Olympic Games. The host cities and governments merely lay out the red carpeting — new venues, new roads, police, et al.The prime seats are trade-offs for all that money changing hands.And sometimes the sponsors’ guests show up. Sometimes they don’t. The same goes for the tickets that are set aside at the discretion of each of the 200-plus competing nations.If the national Olympic committee of North Korea, for example, doesn’t want to attend that day’s canoeing events, those two (or four or whatever) seats will be empty.No-shows have been around since the Christians fought the lions.The London organizing committee, LOCOG, announced that it will begin attempting to reclaim and resell unused tickets for certain events.Some 3,000 were placed on sale Monday.The mistake that Londoners, commentators and headline writers are making, however, is equating the empty VIP seats with a lack of Olympic interest on UK fans’ part. The moral outrage being shown on UK television proves it isn’t so.The empty seats just look bad, the Brits are saying. And the hosts dearly want to show the world that they have embraced everything about these London Games.Including the canoeing.My life at the CircusFor a town that’s been feeding and indulging revelers for more than 2,000 years, London has a surprisingly early closing hour.If the clock strikes midnight, for example, you’d better be sure that the London Underground still has a train to take you back to your hotel.Shops tend to close at 6 p.m. Restaurants are vacuuming the carpets by 9.No worries, I was told by a LOCOG volunteer. Go to Piccadilly Circus.“Plenty to do there,” he said, with a wink-wink.Despite its name, there are no trained animals at Piccadilly Circus.None that I could see, at least.It’s a neon intersection, a gateway to Soho and adjoining entertainment districts. And as midnight approaches, I discovered, it’s also home to a witch’s brew of fast-food joints, over-served tourists looking for a taxi and — how shall I put this? — local business women who have just come out to enjoy the night.Thus, like a typical American, in an effort to remain inconspicuous, I took out my iPad and tried to Google for a late-night restaurant.That’s when the London policeman approached.“Wouldn’t do that here if I were you, sir,” the bobby said. “Keep your gear close, if you know what I mean.” I looked around and I saw what he meant. Spiked hair. Bad tattoos. Angry piercings. It looked like an Oakland Raiders game.There’s a nice Italian place over there, the policeman advised. I might get a table, he said, if I hurried. “Be careful,” the London bobby said, as I walked across the street, neon blaring down, at Piccadilly Circus. And that’s how I ended up eating at Pizza Hut.No sale at the Wimbledon ShopClearly, no self-respecting tourist goes to Wimbledon to purchase a ceramic mascot with “London 2012” stamped on his belly.But as the sign on the Wimbledon Shop said, “No Wimbledon items. Sorry.”Ah, the Great Licensing Wall of the Olympics is at it again. It makes even a national landmark like The All England club cover up its few, discrete logos. It makes you drink Coke, not Pepsi. Eat Cadbury’s chocolate, not a Snickers.No problem with that. But why did Olympic organizers feel the need to cleanse and flush all Wimbledon-branded items from the souvenir shops?“Sorry,” the young woman at the kiosk said. “There are some licensing things going on there, I’m afraid.”At the big Wimbledon Shop at Court One, nonetheless, there were long lines of tennis tourists waiting to buy fancy Olympic T-shirts ($27), Olympic lunch bags ($21), Olympic crystal tennis balls with the London logo on them ($105) and on and on.Where’s all the purple and green Wimbledon stuff, I asked a store clerk?“Would you believe,” she said politely, “that you’re not the first person who’s asked me that today?”I bought a poster. A ball cap. I passed on the $2,800 official London Olympics replica torch.Sorry for the detourWelcome to London. They’re sorry.No, the Brits have been wonderful, smiling Olympic hosts. But they’re sorry.That’s what they keep saying, at any rate.They’re sorry for the weather. They’re sorry because they just told you it’ll be a long walk to your Tube station. They’re sorry Lord Coe doesn’t have a 24-hour hotline to attend our every American need.And they’re sorry, we were told upon leaving The All England Lawn Tennis Club on Monday, that the train station we were intending upon using to return home was closed.“Sorry,” said a LOCOG volunteer wearing a big red foam finger that was pointing in the opposite direction from where I had planned to go.There is no easy way to get to the tennis grounds at Wimbledon. Never has been.For decades, tennis fans have taken the District Line to Southfields and then walked nearly a mile — on a narrow cobblestone sidewalk — to the gates of Wimbledon. Nobody really seems to mind — it’s Wimbledon.But as the volunteers explained, a train had broken down at Southfields on Monday and the station had to be temporarily taken off-line. With volunteers spaced every 30 yards or so, each with a big red foam finger pointing the way, we were directed to the nearest alternative train station.“About 10 minutes,” a volunteer said.Oh. That’s all? No problem, I said.Ten uphill minutes later, there was no train station in sight.“About 25 minutes more,” a volunteer said, pointing to another five blocks of acutely uphill climbing.It was almost an hour before we finally reached Wimbledon Station — the Tube stop for the posh village of Wimbledon, not the tennis club.The GPS on my mobile phone, which didn’t account for the long wait at the station, said it was 1.6 miles from where we started.I was a sweaty mess by the time I got to the train boarding platform.We were greeted by smiling volunteers.“Sorry,” one said, obviously looking me over.Me, too, I told her.It’s never easy to get to Wimbledon.