I'm just waiting. Sitting here in my office, refreshing the Roland Garros website every few minutes. I started out this morning as 33,849 on the wait list. I'm down to 13,763 now.
Getting tickets to the French Open has been quite an adventure. I don't know that I can exactly blame the French Open officials (although I could be annoyed at some of the more bureaucratic elements of the process). I think my lack of French skills and bad luck is as much to blame. And of course I have not yet gotten the tickets. I am still---wait let me check---13,646 on the waiting list.
I started early in my quest to get tickets. My Boston tennis coach, Spritely, warned me that the French Open tickets were a bit difficult to come by, so I knew I had to be organized. I had heard or read that the best way to get tickets was through a tennis club. So, fine, I would join one. Plus, I figured, I would get access to other players, lessons, courts, etc., through the club. I looked online, and joining a tennis club didn't seem so straightforward, although I did find that my arrondissement was hosting a sports fair on a Saturday in early September where representatives from various leagues and clubs would be present. This seemed promising. I put it on the calendar and told Glenn and Kate about it. I mentioned it several times in the week before, even planning when on Saturday we would go. And then I forgot about it completely. I remembered at about 6pm that night, too late to attend. Pretty disappointed, I decided to redouble my efforts to find a tennis club some other way. I spent ridiculous amounts of time online trying to figure this out, googling names of specific clubs I had found, trying to figure out how to apply. I even called various outfits on the phone---no small feat and completely embarrassing given my French phone skills---but was unable to crack the code.
I knew there must be other ways to obtain these tickets. I went online to read others' advice and experience. I found that tickets would go on sale to members of the French Tennis Federation in February and to the general public at 10am on Wednesday, March 21st. The early sales to the members of the FFT must be related to the club membership that I had been trying to obtain. Perhaps I would just have to try my luck with the general public. Some bloggers had tips about how to optimize your chances of being able to purchase them when they go on sale. Ok, I put that date on my calendar and set up an account ahead of time in case I was unable to figure out any other way. In my searching about the FFT, however, I discovered that this year, for the first time, one could become a member of FFT through an online application instead of through a club! That was the key---all I needed was to apply online to the FFT.
Well, it was a bit more complicated than it sounded. In particular, I needed a physician's note that said that I was in acceptable physical condition to play tennis in order to join. I contacted my Boston doctor---I don't have a Paris doctor---and asked her to write me such a note. She couldn't quite believe it at first---"You mean like a note that a pediatrician would write for your kid to go to summer camp?"---but was willing to do it. So I sent in my application, application fee, and doctor's note. I wasn't sure if they would accept a note from a US doctor, but they did, with the provision that I could only receive a non-competitive membership because her letter only cleared me to play tennis, not to compete in tournaments. Well, I had finally done it. I could buy priority French Open tickets.
Not so fast. I went on the website during the priority purchasing period and could not gain access. I tried several times but to no avail. I finally wrote to Roland Garros to ask what the problem was. Two days later I received the reply that the online FFT memberships are not given priority, only those memberships obtained through clubs. Ugh.
I should say that my one final misstep was that, even though the date and time of the general public sales were on my calendar, it slipped my mind until about 10:30 this morning that the tickets went on sale at 10:00 this morning. If I had remembered right at 10:00, I probably could have started out as 5,000 on the waiting list instead of 34,000. So here I am, currently 3,301 on the waiting list.
Hmmm, a quick calculation suggests that the waiting list has sped up markedly since I started this post several minutes ago. I hope that doesn't mean that all of the tickets are sold out now and everyone is bailing from the waiting list . . . .
(Update: Yea!! I got four tickets to court 1 on the first day of the tournament, Sunday, May 27th.)
Zut alors! Félicitations!
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