LONDON — If you cupped your ear toward Atlanta in the wee hours this morning, you almost might've heard some exuberance and maybe even some hollering.
That rare entity known as the 7 a.m. party would have commenced. The kitchen staff of a tennis club in Norcross, Ga., would have arrived. And if it resembled Saturday, a throng might have yelled toward a big screen even if they couldn't see anything up there but a mostly static web page.
"We cheered and we cheered and we cheered," said Anne Keeton, the player liaison for the junior academy for the Racquet Club of the South.
"I'm an emotional wreck right now," said John Oudin, the father of the 17-year-old sudden Wimbledon fourth-rounder who trains at that club. "I just still can't believe it. I'm totally, absolutely blown away."
Whatever became of Melanie Oudin's round-of-16 match with Agnieszka Radwanska, the Georgia teen's march through the Wimbledon draw as a qualifier has electrified a devoted pocket of American tennis and cast light on a borderline-mystical tennis story.
It has sent a buzz through Atlanta, a city known more for Braves and Falcons and Olympics and charmingly lunatic Southeastern Conference football fans calling radio stations, but also home to a vibrant tennis community.
Mostly, it has made people cheer for a website.
That's what happened Saturday as Oudin, the 5-foot-6 jackrabbit who reveres Justine Henin, played No. 6-ranked Jelena Jankovic, having already beaten No. 28 Sybille Bammer and No. 74 Yaroslava Shvedova. When a crowd of about 35 arrived for the rare-hour gathering, television coverage had not yet begun, so these innovative sorts projected the Wimbledon website onto the large screen and cheered with each changing of the score. Eventually the live broadcast began, and the kitchen staff spilled out to join in.
"One of our very own has taken down No. 6," Keeton said one day after Oudin did precisely that, rallying from a set down for the third straight match for her third-ever win in a Grand Slam tournament.
It whipped a host of things into motion. Oudin's mother, Leslie, wound up on a Saturday night flight to London. Venus Williams, Oudin's one-time Federation Cup teammate, said, "Super good news." John Oudin hurried on Sunday afternoon to drop off their 11-year-old daughter, for his overnight flight would take off at 5:30 p.m.
