Wimbledon Diary

Helping hand from HarrisonAndy Murray, the 18-year-old from Dunblane has been offered a chance to improve his fitness from a most unlikely source, the WBO featherweight champion Scott Harrison.

Harrison, who defeated Ireland's Wayne McCullough in the Brae Head Arena, Glasgow in 2003, has offered his fellow Scot the chance to run up and around Ben Nevis from one of his gruelling training camps.

"Boxing's my favourite sport," said Murray yesterday when he heard of the offer.

Murray's mother Judy, however, may have something to say about her teenage boy joining the fighter. Harrison, from East Kilbride, is, according to many of the Scottish journalists here, widely reported as leading a 'colourful lifestyle' in and around the pubs and clubs of his hometown.

Crowds on the up at SW19

For the first time since the tournament started the covers failed to come off at the scheduled time as intermittent light drizzle fell on the All England club. But the rain barely stems the flow of people flooding to the London suburb, although, good weather does draw in bigger numbers.

Last week, when there was perfect weather, Thursday's crowd of 42,228 broke the Wimbledon record for the day while Monday's attendance of 41,386 was also a high.

While yesterday's programme scheduled tennis on the outside courts beginning at 11.00am and on the show courts at 1.00pm, not a ball was struck until 5.31 pm.

Vintage Mauresmo

Who says the French don't have style. This week Amelie Mauresmo revealed one of the other passions in her life away from the court. The third seed has a fine collection of wine, 600 bottles at the last count in her home in Geneva. And she drinks them too.

"My most expensive bottle is a Mouton Rothschild 1982, worth £600. I really love my wine," she said. "But I don't do what the professionals do and spit it out."

Roddick not impressed

Whatever could Andy 'quick fling' Roddick have been meaning this week. When told that Maria Sharapova has had marriage proposals and Scotland's Andy Murray similarly, Roddick claimed that he'd never had any weird proposals from strangers.

Smiling he said: "I don't know if my fans think that long term in regards to me."

No help from weather gods

It was wryly noted yesterday that not even the greatest of influences could prevent the rain from falling on Wimbledon.Yesterday's Royal Box had a couple of interesting names in His Eminence Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who was appointed as the Archbishop of Westminster in 2000 in succession to Cardinal Hume and created a Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in February 2001, and His Excellency Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, the Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain. The two guests, like the rest of the spectators, were left to reflect on the whims of the rain gods as they sat around waiting for play to start.