As Andy Murray prepared to serve for the point that would end Britain's 77-year wait for a men's Wimbledon champion, Neil Stubley wasn't watching the ball.
He wasn't even watching Murray the same way everyone else was. He was watching the Scot's feet.
The baseline on Centre Court was beginning to dust up in the July heat and, as Murray and Novak Djokovic went back-and-forth in that topsy-turvy 12-minute deciding game in 2013, Stubley could see bigger and bigger clouds rising from the turf.
"All I was thinking was, 's---,'" Wimbledon's head groundsman told ESPN.
"I thought, the longer this goes, especially if there's another set, then it's going to be even worse."
Just as Stubley's mind started racing through the worst possible outcomes -- like the horrifying idea of Britain being denied its first men's singles champion since Fred Perry, through a twisted ankle, on a dusty baseline on one of the pitches he and his team had spent the year meticulously crafting -- Djokovic found the net.
Game, set, match and Championship Murray. Centre Court erupted.
Stubley, sat in his designated seat tucked beneath the commentary box, suddenly looked up. Murray was just yards away, facing him, Tim Henman in the commentary booth and the media seating just above that, screaming and pumping his fists, celebrating one of the most famous moments in British sporting history.
"Honestly, I don't remember any of that final rally," Stubley says. "I was just watching his feet and the baseline. Then I looked up and he was coming towards us, pumping his fists like mad. His celebration was almost like, 'thank God that's over.' Funnily enough I was thinking the same thing, just for a slightly different reason!
"That just shows, in this line of work, you've got your mind on the job all the time."
Every blade counts
For Stubley, his anxiety at the end of that match captures the essence of a job he has spent 31 years mastering. While millions watched Murray end decades of hurt, Stubley was thinking about footing, ankles and the most famous blades of grass in the sport.
Beyond the strawberries and cream, Pimms, the pristine whites and the Royal Box, Wimbledon is built on that grass. Every blade on every court -- 18 for matches, including Centre Court and No. 1 Court, and 20 practice courts around the All England Lawn Tennis Club -- are trimmed to 8 millimetres before the Championships begin, creating that vivid, unmistakable shade of green that has become as iconic as anything else associated with the venue's fortnight of tennis.
That near-perfect green is the job of Stubley's team -- 18 strong all year round, with another 12 brought in specifically for the grass court season in the summer months.
Making those courts look like Wimbledon is one challenge. Making sure they still play like Wimbledon two weeks later is another entirely.
And that's why Stubley's recollection of Murray's first championship win is so important to understanding the challenge his team faces.
On the opening Monday of the tournament, every court is pristine, but the wear and tear caused by players slowly erodes the playing surface. By the end of week two, the pristine grass has started to fade, with the dust Stubley could not take his eyes off on that day in 2013 a common feature on every court.
Courts are in session
You would assume the slow visual decline of those pitches would drive someone like Stubley, who has the attention to detail you need to do his job all year round, to the point of madness. Unless the decline specifically leads to player injury, it has the opposite impact.
"The grass is front and centre of what the club's about," Stubley says. "But we just need to make sure it sits there in the background doing its job. It's not the headline. One of the things that I always try and explain to people and sort of debunk the myth is that same question: 'Would you not like it looking like this on day 14 as it does on day one?'
"You kind of go 'well no, because that's part of the challenge.'
"If you want to win Wimbledon, you've got to go through seven rounds. If you're playing every other day, you'll experience seven different playing surfaces, whereas I guess if you're at the [Australian] or the US Open or the French Open, although the weather conditions can affect the ball bounce and everything, there's nothing that really changes the surface like here."
It is one of the things that has given Wimbledon its place as the most famous of tennis' four major tournaments.
"Novak [Djokovic] has explained that a lot before," Stubley says. "He'll tell you, in the first week you can do a very good drop shot, because the canopy is thick, so the ball just bounces and it kills it. But by week two, you'd never do the same drop shot on a match court, and that thud has kind of gone, so it bounces back up a lot higher.
"It's a small thing, but understanding that and adapting your play to the court is what ultimately makes a great grass court player. And Novak is one of the best to ever do it. And it's not just him -- these players can feel the tennis court changing whilst they're progressing through the two weeks of the Championships."
Stubley's job before he turned to horticulture was about preparation of a different kind. As a young adult, he trained as a chef, but he quickly grew disillusioned with life in the kitchen. He joined the All England Lawn Tennis Club's ground staff in 1995 and by 2012 he had risen to his current job, but the mindset of his old career never really left him.
"It might sound silly, but the principles are the same. The soil and the seeds are your ingredients. Then it's about what you do with them. You can make a cake that looks fantastic but tastes rubbish, and you can make a cake which tastes great but looks awful. Our job here is to do both -- and it is a process we are constantly working on."
The same is true of Stubley's courts -- they might look immaculate on television, but if they do not play up to the standards expected of tennis' elite players, he has failed. Likewise, if Monday's event started with images of shoddy, worn-out greens, the media would question how Wimbledon's event had lost its magical look before a ball had been served in anger.
The heat is on -- literally
It's the ultimate balancing act. More recently, a new challenge has presented itself here. This year's Championships begin against the backdrop of a record-setting heatwave across the UK, bringing with it another layer of uncertainty for Stubley and his team, not just for the 2026 edition, but for future championships. A grass court is a living surface and, just like the players who compete on it, its condition changes with the weather.
Preparing it is less about finding a magic formula than constantly responding to what nature throws at you. Stubley likens it to the meticulous routines followed by the world's best players in pursuit of marginal gains.
"The players are looking for their 1%," he explains. "Whether it's how they sleep, how they train, their diet or their hydration, they're trying to get every little advantage they can. We're doing exactly the same with the tennis courts."
That means monitoring everything from the nutritional health of the grass to moisture levels and soil conditions, tweaking irrigation schedules during hot spells and even changing the time of day the courts are cut to avoid placing unnecessary stress on the plants.
"If you end up going into the Championships with slightly unhealthy grass, that's where the challenges come in," Stubley continues.
"Our most important work is actually probably in August and September, after the tournament, when we're renovating the courts. If we get that right, then everything we do afterwards is about maintaining that health. If we get that wrong, it has a big knock-on effect which we end up dealing with around this time of year."
He reaches for another simple comparison.
"If you keep yourself as healthy as possible, then when a virus comes along you're in a much better position to deal with it. The grass is no different. That's the easiest answer to how we are dealing with the new realities of weather and climate at the moment."
Green, green grass
By the time the first ball is struck on Centre Court, the foundations have already been laid. The fortnight itself is not about creating the perfect Wimbledon court, but helping it withstand two weeks of relentless punishment while remaining unmistakably, and uniquely, Wimbledon. The final touches come in the days before the Championships. The courts receive one last spray, rich in iron rather than nitrogen, to deepen their famous green without making the surface slippery.
Stubley smiles when he recalls visitors asking whether the surface on Centre Court is even real.
"People turn up and they say, 'Oh my God ... Is it real or is it artificial?'" he says. "That's the best compliment because you've made it look that pristine."
It would be easy to assume Stubley and his team's sole focus throughout the year is the two weeks the venue is most famous for. But the AELTC is a functioning club all year round -- on the Tuesday morning after the tournament, less than 36 hours after the completion of the men's singles final, members will arrive looking to play matches as normal.
The club boasts a membership of 375 people. In the weeks after Wimbledon, the club plays host to a series of competitions -- some fairly standard, like the UK's Under-14 Championships, which uses all 18 courts, or the Senior UK tour, which uses 16; then others which are more unique, like the biennial Harvard vs. Yale tournament, or a yearly event which sees politicians from the House of Commons play members of the House of Lords.
"That's the thing with this job. A lot of people assume we have to get this court ready for two weeks of tennis, and that's just about it," Stubley explains. "But we have members turning up after the Championships finish and they expect a certain standard from their membership.
"They expect a certain standard from the pitches we play. Likewise the other events we host -- we have to accommodate the championships and everything they stand for, but also everything else the club functions to serve all year round.
"So what you see here for these two weeks is like the tip of the iceberg -- the job exists before the Championships and it continues after it as well."