The buzzing of social media
“Can't believe what's just happened!!!!!!!”
That was Andy Murray’s reaction on Twitter to winning his first ever Wimbledon crown, an occasion that sparked massive celebrations in Britain and ended the 77-year wait for a homegrown champion.
While thousands of people on Centre Court and on Murray Mound were holding their breath in that epic final game and cheering wildly as he clinched match point, countless more were following the action on social media.
Well, not exactly countless. In fact, that tweet of Murray’s had been re-tweeted precisely 54,954 times by 7.40pm GMT, a sign of the extraordinary levels of interaction with all the happenings at the All England Club.
In the last five minutes of his gripping final against Novak Djokovic, tweets peaked at 400 per second, perhaps a sign of the pandemonium that was shortly to follow.
By 7.00pm, Championship-related tweets on Sunday had hit a staggering one million – with almost 500,000 related to the men’s winner – to take the grand tally of Wimbledon-related tweets to over five million for the tournament fortnight.
Murray proved a hit on Twitter throughout the Championships, finishing as the most tweeted-about player of all men in the draw with more than 1.1 million tweets relating to his name. Sabine Lisicki was the most tweeted-about female with 300,000 tweets.
And as Murray moved closer towards creating history on the final Sunday, the sentiment of the tweets became increasingly positive. By the end of men’s final day, more than 93 per cent of tweets relating to the Scot were overall positive.
With its many twists and turns, the Murray-Djokovic final prompted plenty of commentary from both experts and fans alike.
As Djokovic screamed in protest about a line call – having run out of challenges – in the second set, tennis scribe Pete Bodo tweeted: “The game changer: Djokovic's unjustified freak out over non-call. That was a big tell re. Anxiety and emotion.”
Just a few games later, the sentiment had changed.
“Djoker has another one of his 3rd winds ATM now a bit of pressure back on Muzzard #ESPNWimbledon,” American Brad Gilbert tweeted.
In the end, however, it was Murray coming through in an excruciatingly tense final game to claim an historic victory at the All England Club.
“#Murray takes the #Wimbledon singles title 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 v #Djokovic #mensfinal #allinforAndy #bANDYwagon,” was the line from the official Wimbledon twitter account.
And in keeping with the massive activity-levels and traffic numbers for the day, it was re-tweeted almost 6,000 times.
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