Blimey! Gate Is Crashed : Wimbledon: The public gets a chance to attend the matches on historic middle Sunday and has a jolly good time.

The day that wasn’t supposed to be, the heretofore middle Sunday of rest of the fortnight at Wimbledon, turned out to be a day for the ages.

So much happened that it was a happening.

The tennis was creative, competitive and compelling. But that wasn’t what made June 30, 1991, a day that will live for a long time in the hearts of sports fans and the history books of tennis here.

No, what happened here that really mattered was that the common people were let in, and a smashing good time was had by all. The quality and quantity of tennis--John McEnroe winning again, Ivan Lendl struggling back from a two-set deficit, Martina Navratilova and Gabriela Sabatini coasting as planned and veterans Jimmy Connors and Pam Shriver fighting the good fight before falling--were noteworthy. But the crowds of common folk made it an uncommon event.

Wimbledon lives on its tradition. Oozes it.

There is the Brit who is set-jawed, strait-laced, stiff-upper-lipped and oh, so very proper. Since this tournament was first played in 1877, that is the kind of Brit who came to Wimbledon, for this proper sort of entertainment. As Connors said, the normal Wimbledon spectator would commend a good shot with a “jolly good.”

Then there is the Brit who goes to soccer games and calls Wembley Stadium his sports grotto. He works hard for a living, wants his soccer scores in the morning paper and wouldn’t be anywhere near well-enough connected to wrangle a decent ticket to Wimbledon. If he lived in the United States, he would be a Mets’ fan.

Well, the shrine was overrun Sunday with people yelling such things as “Kick his butt, Jimmy,” instead of “Jolly good, my boy.” And the strange thing was that everybody, the British Brits and the Bratish Brits, seemed to enjoy every minute.

This whole thing was caused by rain, so much of it in the first week that the only way to complete a fortnight of tournament in a fortnight was to tread on sacred ground and play for the first time on the middle Sunday. Once that was decided, late Friday afternoon, it was too late to enact any sort of ticket distribution to the normal favored few, so Wimbledon decided to open up its tournament to the public for the day on a first-come, first-served basis. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker had as good a chance at a prime seat on Centre Court or Court One as the guys with “Sir” and “The Honorable” before their names.

So they came, 24,894 of them, “a record crowd for this day” as one droll Wimbledon official put it. And among the things that happened were:

--They did the wave on Centre Court at 11:45, some 15 minutes before the players even stepped onto the court. “Can you imagine a wave at Wimbledon?” a delighted Connors said. “Usually, the only wave you get here is like this.” And he wiggled his middle fingers and pinky.

--They cheered the entrance of ballboys, maintenance workers, even umpires.

--They clapped in cadence as players warmed up, and they cheered everything and everybody, frequently to the point of harmless silliness. When MaliVai Washington was about to serve a key point against Ivan Lendl, a fan standing outside, able to merely see the scoreboard that said Washington was playing Lendl, shouted loudly: “Do it, George.”

--They cajoled the best effort possible out of a tired Connors on Centre Court, and when he finally lost to a younger and stronger Derrick Rostagno, they saluted him with a long standing ovation, a salute he returned on his way out with his patented pirouette and mock pistol shoot to both sides of the stands.

--They greeted McEnroe like a long lost brother on Court One and stomped and hollered their way through his straight-set victory over Frenchman Jean-Philippe Fleurian. “It was fun, a nice change of pace,” McEnroe said. “You don’t often hear a soccer crowd at Wimbledon.”

--They swarmed over the back courts, supporting players who seldom get this sort of backing or recognition.

--And when it was over, after they had stayed for all of the action and even gotten a Centre Court bonus when officials put out an unscheduled mixed doubles match shortly before dark, they left with a shocking revelation from the public address announcer. He said, in his very proper Wimbledon voice, that this had been “the most enthusiastic Centre Court crowd we’ve ever had.”

The only question that remained, after it all had ended, was whether Wimbledon will do it again, or will even make the middle Sunday an annual day for the general fan. Wimbledon certainly didn’t go into this wanting to do it at all, and even now, in the flush of this success and the huge rush of positive public relations this will bring, it is resisting.

“This Sunday should not be seen as any sort of precedent,” said Christopher Gorringe, Wimbledon’s official spokesman on the matter. But he said that early in the day, before lots of things happened. Before key things, such as the wave.

Indeed, staid Wimbledon didn’t know what hit it here Sunday. And it might take some very proper introspection before deciding if it will do this again. But the pressure will be on from the British press, which loved it.

One of the people who lined up to see tennis was a woman who told Bill Glauber of the Baltimore Sun that the idea of traveling the hour or so from her home to Wimbledon for this special Sunday hit her in the middle of the night. “I woke my husband at 4 in the morning,” she said, “and said to him, ‘Let’s go for it.’ But he thought I meant something else, so he just rolled over and went back to sleep.”

Right now, there are lots of people hoping that Wimbledon goes for it, that it doesn’t merely roll over on this one.